In Charlotte, Iʼve spent months trying to interview certain CEOs who lead some of the largest companies.

When I ask, sometimes repeatedly, for a sit-down interview, a spokesman usually responds, “We donʼt do local media” or that they’re “not available to do that right now.”  

And when asked, “When would be a better time?” the email or phone message typically goes unreturned.

When Chiquita Brands announced its move from Cincinnati to Charlotte, I put in the request to interview CEO Fernando Aguirre through his Twitter account.

He responded with “Contact my press person” and gave me that person’s email address. I did and instantly received a response from his press office and Chief of

Staff Andrew Ciafardini.

The conversation developed into a plan for us to travel to Cincinnati and for Aguirre to take us behind the scenes of this Fortune 500 Company.

Our purpose was to find out what exactly Charlotte is getting with this move.

The week before I traveled to Cincinnati, I interviewed Aguirre at our studios. The story of how he picked Charlotte still amazes me. If not for a storm back in February of 2011,

Chiquita might not be coming to Charlotte.

Chiquita does not have any corporate jets – a fact of which the company is quite proud. So last year, when Aguirre was flying back to Cincinnati, he had a layover in Charlotte. There were storms on that day and his connecting flight at Charlotte-Douglas was delayed a couple of hours.

As he tells it, he decided to spend the time roaming the concourse. He took a look at the monitors which list the flights and he noticed many flights from Charlotte going directly to various cities across the United States. Then he noticed numerous direct flights to various destinations in Central America and Europe. Since Chiquita has plants throughout the world, certain destinations stood out to him.

Aguirre said the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport, which is about 25 minutes from downtown Cincinnati, hardly compared.  He called his HR Director to research Charlotte as a possible site for relocation.  And as Aguirre says, “the rest is history”.

Aguirreʼs office sits on the 29th floor of the Chiquita Center and overlooks Procter and

Gambleʼs Headquarters.  He once worked at P&G so he has rich history in Cincinnati.

This town loves him.

Heʼs an avid supporter of local charities, shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal money to local agencies.  He gets behind the Bengals and the Reds as if he were born here.   

He was actually born in Mexico but went to Southern Illinois University on a baseball scholarship, which explains his love for baseball.

As he showed me around his office, he pointed out the many mementos heʼs collected over the years -- items from politicians, a basketball from Dukeʼs Coach K, a framed knife that he used while appearing on the TV show, Undercover Boss.

Aguirre also has a collection of wooden and sculpted owls in his office, surrounded by two tall book cases full of books on leadership. He said heʼs partial to books by Jack Welch, who ran GE. He told me he believes in change, saying, “Iʼm a firm believer in, youʼve got to be different next year”.

He’s active on Twitter. I had to ask him to refrain from tweeting about our interview so we could hold our story for a week. He jumped into Twitter at the nudging of his son, who he said bugged him about it for two months before he finally signed up. He likes Twitter because he says it “humanizes” him.

Aguirre says he’s looking forward to coming to Charlotte, what he calls “a forever move”. Heʼs developed friendships with the heavyweights already, Hugh McColl, Jerry Richardson, Jim Rogers and Mayor Anthony Foxx. He knows this is the “honeymoon phase” and he realizes it will eventually wear off. But he says heʼs eager to be involved in this city and to meet people here. In a city where many CEOʼs are less than transparent, Aguirre says “Iʼm just like anyone else”.

It will be interesting to see how Charlotte embraces that.