Locations

Loma Verde isn’t technically a city — it’s unincorporated, the kind of place that grew from usefulness rather than planning. It sits quietly beside the more polished Rancho Santa Lorena, carrying the bones of old agriculture: faded grove rows, worn irrigation lines, and neighborhoods built around work rather than ambition. Development has crept in around it, but Loma Verde never bothered to reinvent itself. Locals know each other, remember who helped who, and carry a quiet pride that never needs to announce itself. To outsiders it barely registers; to the people who live there, it’s home — steady, stubborn, and deeply rooted.

Once it was Sunrise Orchard & Packing House, part of California’s citrus boom — trains, crates, and oranges heading everywhere. Time moved on, the industry faded, and the buildings should’ve become ruins… but instead they became Martin Hilliard’s workshop.

Legally, it’s still Sunrise. Practically, everyone close to the family just calls it “the workshop.” Behind the modest, slightly weathered gate are vast industrial bays, quiet machinery, and a history of projects nobody talks about out loud. It feels lived-in, capable, private — the kind of place important things get fixed without fanfare.

To outsiders: an aging agricultural site that somehow survived.

To the Hilliards: memory, sanctuary, obligation, legacy.

And still, after all these years, it remains the same kind of place:

things come here when they need to be repaired — and trusted.

Rancho Santa Lorena is Loma Verde’s polished cousin — newer money, carefully curated charm, and an economy built on image, boutique experiences, and the romantic myth of “old California.” Palm trees line wide boulevards leading to glass buildings, curated luxury spaces, sleek hotels, and tech-adjacent ventures selling the future with a nostalgic smile.

Beneath the polish is a quiet tension: wealth bumping against roots, outsiders brushing shoulders with families who remember when this land was dirt roads and citrus. It’s beautiful, successful, and a little haunted by history — the kind of place where fortunes are made, reputations matter, and perception often weighs more than truth.

Once the proud headquarters of a regional mid-century bank, the Old Santa Lorena Trust Building now houses Adrian’s company in Rancho Santa Lorena. Short by modern skyline standards but architecturally dignified, it carries that solid “we expected to last a hundred years” confidence—clean lines, warm stone, polished metal, terrazzo floors, and tall lobby windows that glow softly at dusk. Renovated with restraint rather than glam, the building still bears subtle marks of its former life: a preserved vault repurposed for secure storage, brass directory plaques left in place, and framed historic banking memorabilia Adrian intentionally keeps as part of its story. Locals still casually call it “The Bank,” and the Hilliards do too—with both affection and irony—because it now quietly funds the future while remembering the weight of the past.

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Nora’s home

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