Marietta - An idea Tammy Cohen, 40, of Marietta had 15 years ago has brought her from administrative assistant for others to the president and chairwoman of one of the largest companies in the background-screening industry.

"They call me the queen of screen," she said about her status in the field of background checking.

InfoMart, the company she co-founded in 1988 with Blair Cohen, has risen from a small start-up with a handful of employees to a business its employees say is the largest female-owned private background-screening company in the world.

The company, located just off Interstate 75 and Terrell Mill Road, does searches ranging from credit checks and criminal background searches to in-depth international profiles on potential employees for a wide range of companies.

InfoMart counts many corporate giants among its clientele, including 18 of 32 National Football League teams, Starbucks, Philip Morris and McDonald's.

Last year, the company did about one million background searches for just under 10,000 clients at an average cost of about $30 a search, said Patrick Kennedy, InfoMart national account coordinator.

Ms. Cohen said she never imagined InfoMart would rise to the top of the industry. She said the idea of starting a background-checking company came to her while she was working for a real estate firm in the late 1980s and witnessed them getting burned by an employee with a not-so-stellar track record.

"They just had a girl that was working for us for one day and the next day she unloaded her desk, took down her picture frames, and then she just never showed up again," Ms. Cohen said. "She tried to file for unemployment, and, come to find out, she did this all the time."

She said the time and energy companies waste atoning for the actions of dishonest employees takes away from those trying to make an honest living.

Edward R. Tallon, vice president of loss prevention for Greer, S.C.-based Ryan's Family Steak Houses Inc., said his company is one of InfoMart's clients because it is not willing to take the risk of hiring employees without checking them out.

All of the company's 22,000 employees undergo social security number verification and criminal background checks, he said.

"Everybody," he said. "One hundred percent of the company - hourly and corporate, from the server to the dishwasher to the meat cutter, everybody."

In addition, the 25-year-old company does credit history checks on all the cashiers who work in its 330 restaurants and other employees who deal with the company's finances.

He said the company began testing the concept of background checks about five years ago and now has had everybody in the company checked. He said Ryan's adopted its policy for good business reasons.

"Ryan's has a commitment to have a safe and pleasant work environment for its team members and a safe and pleasant environment for its customers," he said. "We are a company that is a family restaurant operation."

He said they do not hire anyone with a violent history including sexual offenses or robbery in their past.

Ms. Cohen said big businesses like Ryan's now make up 80 percent of InfoMart's clientele, with more clients pouring in all the time. But when she started the business it was a different story, she said.

"When we first started, we would have to go out to people and explain what a background check was and the value of it," she said. "The sell was so much harder."

When InfoMart first got its start, only about 20 other background-screening firms existed in the country that she knew of, Ms. Cohen said.

Today, growth in the industry prompted the formation of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners this year, and the association now has more than 200 active members, according to association Executive Director Tracy Seabrook.

Ms. Cohen said that when InfoMart got its start, people questioned if what they were doing was illegal, but the information the company gathers is all public record, usually obtained through police departments and courts. It is collected via computer or in-person by one of the 1,500 contractors they employ nationwide.

She also said that when she started the company, another challenge it faced was that it took time for her to earn respect among some in the heavily male-dominated industry. But, she said, the challenges along the way didn't deter her from starting InfoMart.

"I knew how much a credit report costs and that they are public record," she said. "That is when it clicked that this something I can do."

Ms. Cohen said her entrepreneurial spirit is something that has been with her since she was a child in Oklahoma, where she lived and worked on her family farm until her teenage years.

"I guess I was around 12 when I had taken all (my mother's) perfume bottles, mixed and filled them with water and was selling them to neighbors," she said.

In fact, InfoMart is the third company she has founded. The first was an administrative assistant business that catered to real estate agents without secretarial help. The second helped companies book vacations and hotel rooms as a benefit for its employees.

She said treating her employees right and giving them a chance to rise in the ranks is high on the list of her business goals.

"When I was an admin, I was working a lot of hours and looked around and saw how much money I was making other people," she said. "In admin, I was pigeon-holed that I was only going to be that."

Now, she said she takes pride in the fact that her senior-most vice president is a woman who started working with the company as part of the Walton High School work-study program 15 years ago.

She said she sees working as a team with her 82 employees and the flexibility they offer their clients is what has made the business a success.

InfoMart was the first in the industry to build a computer program to make information on background checks available over the Internet to their clients, she said.

And while the Cohens are at the top of the game, Ms. Cohen said that doesn't mean they are done building.

"I think next year we are working on bringing on a variety of services," she said. "And maybe make some acquisitions."