Newcomers to Corona Retain Their O.C. Ties : Community: Some fudge the truth when telling friends where they live. But others are trying to get involved in city affairs.

CORONA — With smirks on their faces, some longtime residents love to tell the story of the young couple who moved to a new Corona housing tract thinking they were moving to East Anaheim Hills.

The story, which has become somewhat of a legend in the past year, is the best example native Coronans have of what has been happening in this bedroom community that was once a small town of orange and lemon groves. With the city of 70,000 so close to Orange County, new residents who move to Corona still declare their allegiances to their former hometowns to the west.

Their homes might be in Corona, but they work in Orange County, go to the doctor in Orange County and even shop at Orange County supermarkets. Some residents send their children to Orange County schools.

When blame goes out, fingers are most often pointed at Sierra del Oro, a massive, 1,200-acre housing development of largely pink adobe homes built on the terraced hillsides of west Corona, not far from the Orange County line. So when residents make their daily commutes on the Riverside Freeway, they bypass the heart of Corona all together.

“It’s almost as if they don’t know what’s here,” said Susanna Branch, the past president of the Corona Historic Preservation Society. “Nearly everyone (in Sierra del Oro) works in Orange County.”

Some of Sierra del Oro’s newest residents say that the ties are tough to break.

Char-lee Reish, 23, moved to Sierra del Oro several months ago along with her husband and their two children. He commutes daily to a job in Orange, and they still see doctors in Orange County and shop at Anaheim Plaza. She is even reluctant to tell people that she lives in Corona.

“I don’t tell anyone I live in Corona,” she said. “There’s just something about it. (My friends) think it’s real hot here.”

“I still tell people we’re about a mile east of Yorba Linda,” she said.

Beatrice Estrada, 34, who lives in the same neighborhood, shares the same kind of story of moving out here from Pico Rivera two months ago. People had little idea of what Corona was, she said.

“It was very hard at first,” she said. “I would say that I was on the very edge of Yorba Linda.”

Estrada, who moved with her husband and their 3-year-old son, said she still shops at a shopping center in Whittier. Downtown Corona, she said, is too blighted.

“They don’t have anything out here,” Estrada said. “When you go into town, it’s kind of depressing. This is what we moved away from.”

Part of the problem has been the city’s merger of new developments with what was once a slow-paced, small-town atmosphere. The city has grown too fast for planners and developers to provide needed services, particularly shopping centers.

“I guess why there is an identity problem is, we’re so close to Orange County. It’s easier for them to go back,” said Ken Calvert, 37, a Corona Realtor and lifetime resident. “We’re more accustomed to shopping in Orange County. It’s just as easy to go to South Coast Plaza as it is to go to Tyler Mall (in Riverside), and it’s probably better.”

Further, he added, it is natural for new residents to stay close to their hometowns, especially if they are nearby.

“That’s probably the case in almost any community,” Calvert said. “Their roots are where they came from. It’s not that easy to break away from it overnight.”

But many residents say that it has taken new Corona residents a longer time. Part of the reason is that long commutes strand residents on the freeway for hours, leaving them little time in the evening.

“It doesn’t leave yourself a lot of time to familiarize yourself to a new area,” said Ron Raposa, an advertising executive who has lived in Corona since 1981. “I think it’s a much slower process than one would expect.”

Another problem is the way people in Orange and Los Angeles counties identify with Corona. Some outsiders even get Corona’s name confused with Corona del Mar, the seaside community in Orange County. Raposa, who writes columns for Corona This Month magazine, said one of his favorite stories is of a mover who tried to deliver office furniture to an address on Ramona Drive in Corona del Mar, confusing it with Ramona Avenue in Corona. He called several hours later and discovered he was in the wrong city.

“So many people confused the two,” he said. “I had to tell them, ‘No, it’s not the Corona del Mar by the ocean. It’s the Riverside Corona.’ ”

The confusion got so bad that Raposa has printed bumper stickers and made T-shirts that read “Corona No del Mar.”

Branch, who moved from Placentia seven years ago to a new housing tract on the east end of town, said that when she first moved to Corona, some of her friends and acquaintances had little idea of what it was.

“People gave me this, ‘Yeah, you’re living out in a community with no culture,’ or ‘Yeah, you’re in a backwater town,’ ” she said. “It was kind of insulting.”

When the City Council approved Sierra del Oro in 1985, many longtime residents paid little attention to the project. But many watched in amazement--or dismay--as the hillsides were leveled and dotted with the new homes. The project, which will include almost 3,200 units when completed, was marketed to potential home buyers for its proximity to Orange County rather than its relation to Corona.

What irks some residents--both in and out of Sierra del Oro--is a feeling that they don’t want to admit they are from Corona. Raposa once wrote a column in which he referred to the new community as “Sierra del Taco.”

“It’s not to be a negative connotation,” he said. “It’s a little poke at the pretentiousness of the name. It’s more on the developer. I mean, ‘Hills of Gold?’ It struck me as a little pretentious.”

And stories have spread about the new residents. Among them are that new residents print the addresses on their checks as “Sierra del Oro” rather than “Corona.” Much of this criticism, even old-time residents say, is unwarranted.

“They got a bad rap,” said Larry Clark, a real estate agent who has sold many homes in Sierra del Oro for almost three years and has lived in Corona since the mid-1970s. “That’s really not the truth. They are very interested in being involved in Corona.”

“Everyone wants to be a part of Corona,” said Clark, who also produces a Sierra del Oro newsletter. “They don’t want to secede from the union.”

Clark said that with the completion of Sierra del Oro Towne Centre, a new shopping center, more residents will be apt to stay put in Corona.

He also pointed to recent controversies that have galvanized residents of the community, proving that they are becoming more involved in city affairs. In March, Sierra del Oro residents filled City Council chambers when the council voted to close a residential street that had been clogged with rush-hour commuters taking a shortcut through Corona.

Among the proponents of the road closure who spoke before the council was Douglas DeNardo, who moved with his wife from Orange in December and still commutes to work at Rockwell International in Newport Beach.

“During the week, I guess we tend to shop and do our daily routine in Orange County,” he said. “But on weekends, I try not to go to Orange County at all. . . . We moved to get away from Orange County. That’s because of all the congestion.”

In Corona, he added, there is a feeling that something can be done about problems.

“In Orange County, (the city councils) are influenced by the developers,” DeNardo said. “I’m glad we don’t have a Corona Co. or a Rancho Santa Margarita Co. or an Irvine Co. type of situation. They’re responsive to the people instead of looking to create the perfect community.”

The controversy also resulted in the creation of Citizens of Corona for Traffic Solutions, a committee to advise the City Council on traffic problems all over the city.

More recently, a Sierra del Oro Homeowners School Committee was formed after residents became angry about the prospect of having some of their children bused outside their neighborhood because of overcrowding at Prado View Elementary School.

For now, many residents say, many in Corona are resigned to the fact that it is in much the same spot that Orange County was 30 years ago, when people were getting out of Los Angeles.

“They’re just seeds now,” said A.J. (Dutch) Velthoen, who has lived in the city for 50 years. “It takes time to establish roots.

“They have their churches and their doctors and their shopping habits. I don’t think it’s bad. It will work itself out.”