Xicotencatl “Chico” Macias earned a business degree at the University of New Mexico.

“But I should have studied electrical engineering,” says Macias, as he shows a visitor the huge and unique (to Hawaii, anyway) machinery used to mass produce tortillas. “It’s not like I can call someone down the street and say, ‘Hey come fix my tortilla machine.’ There’s nothing else like this in Hawaii.”

The Sinaloa factory near the airport is indeed one of a kind in the islands, although there was another on Maui a while back.

There are three mostly automated production-line machines: one for flour tortillas, one for corn tortillas and “our new toy,” as Chico calls it, for making chips.

Production is down about 30% because of restaurant closings due to COVID-19. But the facility still produces between 15,000 and 20,000 tortillas a day, six days a week. Grocery stores are still selling chips and tortillas, and many local Mexican restaurants have remained open or re-opened after transitioning to takeout-only operations for now.

With social distancing still the law of the land, it will be a relatively tame Cinco de Mayo next week, but it won’t be a disaster.

“Things are getting better,” says the eldest Macias brother, Cuauhtemoc, who goes by Cuauht and is Sinaloa’s CEO. “We were down to zero distribution for food service at first. But they’re coming back.”

On Friday, Mario Baron, owner of Los Chaparros Mexican Restaurant, stopped by for a pickup that included more than just chips and wraps for enchiladas and burritos. In a large storeroom away from the tortilla machines, Sinaloa stocks huge cans of beans, jalapenos, hominy and other staples of Mexican cuisine, as well as cases of colorful bottles of Jarritos soft drinks.

“If you do Mexican food, we’re a one-stop shop,” Cuauht says.

Chico, Cuauht and two more brothers, Quetzalcoatl (better known as Q) and Tonatiuh (Tona), run Sinaloa, which employs about 20 other workers (a few of the older ones have taken a break so they can quarantine).

>> MORE PHOTOS: Sinaloa produces between 15,000-20,000 tortillas a day during coronavirus pandemic

YSIDRO MACIAS founded the company in the 1990s, and retired a decade ago. The 76-year-old patriarch and his wife, Isis, still own Sinaloa, but their approach is hands-off as they let their sons grow with the business.

“In 2010 he called a meeting and told us, ‘As of this day, I’m retired,’” says Cuauht, who was a server at the Halekulani when he wasn’t working at Sinaloa.

“I was like, ‘What do I do?’ He said, ‘You figure it out.’”

The brothers have done just that. If you eat a tortilla in Hawaii — whether store-bought, at a restaurant or in a school lunch (remember when there was school to go to?), there’s a very good chance it was produced at the factory on Ualena Street.

Many Americans relate the name Sinaloa to the Netflix show “Narcos” and drug cartels, the same way some think Dog the Bounty Hunter runs Hawaii, or that MTV’s “Jersey Shore” was an accurate representation of New Jersey.

“Somebody mentioned that on our Facebook page,” Cuauht says. “It’s so silly. They should realize Sinaloa is a state in Mexico.”

Ysidro’s parents came from Sinaloa, leaving for Salinas, Calif., where they toiled as migrant field workers. “It was tough, paycheck-to-paycheck, when there was work,” Ysidro recalls. “Then for a four month stretch, no work, and we’d tough it out. A 100-pound sack of beans, a 100-pound sack of flour, a 100-pound sack of potatoes and a few chilies.”

Ysidro served in the Army after high school, then attended junior college and eventually graduated from the University of California-Berkeley. He was at Berkeley in the turbulent late ’60s, and was among leaders of the Third World Liberation Front. That coalition of four minority groups conducted a 2-1/2-month strike that resulted in Cal becoming the first college in the country with an ethnic studies program.

Then came law school, followed by a successful career in Fresno that included handling workers’ compensation claims for laborers like his parents.

A FAMILY vacation in Hawaii led to the idea of moving here.

They opened Sinaloa as a Mexican restaurant, and began to build a following. But then, “Iniki hit nine months later,” Cuauht says.

The 1992 hurricane did only light damage to the restaurant; just one cracked window. But like just about everyone on the island, the restaurant lost electricity. The family cooked all the food stored in its big industrial freezer and fed the community for free.

“When the power went out, the food was going to be compromised anyway,” Ysidro says.

When things on Kauai returned to normal, the restaurant re-opened.

Then in 1995, an assistant manager from the Kapaa Safeway asked Cuauht if they sold tortillas. He said, yes, because they had a few on display. But the store manager was proposing something much more than a couple of packages for personal consumption.

“I told my dad, and the lightbulb went on,” Cuauht says.

By 1998, Sinaloa tortillas were in Safeway stores statewide. The family closed the restaurant and moved to Oahu to focus on tortillas.

THEIR BUSINESS has grown steadily since, with the tortillas available at many local grocery stores, and with chips joining the line of tortillas last year.

“This is our past and present,” Cuauht says, pointing to tortillas. “But this is our future,” he says, as he shifts his focus to bags of chips.

The family stays positive as it works through a challenging time for many businesses, including restaurants and those who supply them.

Macias is proud of his sons.

“Absolutely,” he says, from his home in Mililani. “We made the generational transition, and it’s been 10 years now.”

Maybe making tortillas isn’t as glamorous as being an activist, a lawyer or a restaurant owner, but Sinaloa, the factory, has filled a need in the Macias family’s adopted home state.

“I learned a lesson 30 years ago,” Ysidro says. “Don’t give people what you want to give them. Give them what they want.”