Caroline McDermott’s invention was inspired by heartbreak and disgust. The single mother of four and Pebble Beach Company bartender experienced tragedy at 14 when her father was killed in a fire after he fell asleep with a lit cigarette.

“Needless to say,” she says, “it was a very tragic and traumatizing experience for me.”

More inspiration would skip a generation – waiting until she found her young daughter chewing on an old cigarette butt on Carmel Beach. She knew then she had to pursue her idea. She set out to create a very affordable airtight cylinder that holds multiple cigarette butts – a pocket ashtray of sorts she would call “Buttiez.”

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McDermott grew up in North Hollywood, where she later pursued acting and modeling. She has traveled the paths of waitress, organic farmer, undercover security guard, scientist’s aide at the USDA, wife and mommy.

Recently divorced, today she balances a full time workweek as a bartender at Spanish Bay with the diverse demands of steering her four children (ages 2, 6, 8 and 12) through life as a single mother.

Her friends and coworkers don’t know how she manages to play inventor-entreprenuer on top of those demands.

“I also have four kids and I honestly can’t imagine doing all that she does,” says Misty Cameron, friend of 14 years. “She really motivates you to take on whatever it is that you’re passionate about.”

McDermott says the lessons she learned from the cutthroat world of the fashion industry – which helped transform a normally shy girl into an outgoing woman ready to reach for her dreams – that helped her convert inspiration into something tangible.

She first logged on to InventHelp.com, a site designed to empower would-be designers, but that screamed scam – there was a $10,000 tag to develop and patent her product. She persisted, though, tracking down Warren E. Small, a business lawyer from Carmel with a reservoir of patent experience. McDermott rattled off her pitch.

“Smokers are not necessarily dirty people who want to throw trash onto the ground,” says McDermott, who smokes. “They’re sometimes people who don’t want to put a smoldering dirty cigarette butt into their pocket.

“This product doesn’t promote smoking, it promotes cleaning up the environment.”

She hits on the horrors caused by fires: In 2007, 3,430 civilians and 118 firefighters lost their lives as a result of wildfires often caused by cigarette butts (17,675 civilians were injured); around 1,000 people every year are killed in their homes from fires caused by a lit butt.

Though Small told her he advises nine out of 10 people to give up on the process of developing a product, he saw something there and helped her determine there was no similar patent.

McDermott hustled to get Buttiez.com up and running and is now distributing fliers that stop viewers short with their amateur PhotoShop portrayal of a poor sea otter with more than a dozen cigarette butts stubbed out all over it.

Two local businesses – Del Monte Auto Repair and Carrigg’s of Carmel – already carry the product, and friends have taken to Buttiez enthusiastically.

“My husband is a smoker and he always puts his cigarette butts in his pockets so he isn’t littering,” Mischa Rood says. “His jeans would reek of smoke. Half the time I’d forget to clean out his back pockets when doing laundry, so I’d end up with massive cigarette filters in my washer or dryer.”

Her husband has even armed the guys at his pavement maintenance company.

“My husband gave some samples to the guys at his work, and they are all using them now,” she says. “I ended up double sided sticky taping one inside my jeep so I don’t have to use the ashtray, and you can’t even tell my car has been smoked in.”

McDermott, meanwhile, is shopping for a partner and scheming on how to make the container biodegradable.

“It’s a fight worth fighting for, and I’m no quitter,” she says.

It’s hard to envision the $1-a-pop product making her rich – but McDermott acknowledges that she has more than money invested in the product: “I almost didn’t pursue this idea, but I felt like I would regret it one day.

“I couldn’t save him,” she continues, “but by inventing this little tube, in a way I’m trying to save everyone’s dad, and mend my broken heart.”

For more on Buttiez, visit www.buttiez.com