Meet Your New Neighbors

Brian and Christina Porter are thrilled that they finally live in a place where Brian can be home with his family every night instead of just once a week. For the last 10 years, Brian has been a supervisor and transmission lineman with Southern California Edison.

The Porter family lived in Phelan, located on Highway 138 close to the 15 Freeway and the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County. Brian was assigned to areas of Kern County so his family rarely saw him during the week. Now that the kids were getting older, they looked for a home that would lend itself to a more normal family life. Christina said that Tehachapi filled the bill. However, they would have to downsize from their three acre ranch to a little over one acre at their new home. In Phelan they had horses, cows and pigs so the farm animals would have to go.

Although she was born in Compton, Christina grew up and went to high school in Phelan. She worked as a restaurant manager there. She has a brother who is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Navy and a sister who is still living in Phelan. Brian was born in Newport Beach and raised in Irvine. He has two sisters who live in Colorado. It was his work that brought him to Phelan and Christina.

Last August, Brian, Christina and their three sons Brenden, Aidan and Cole moved to Bear Valley, into a house that needed a great deal of remodeling. They moved out of Phelan about the time of the big fire in that area last summer. The entire family took part in the remodel of the new house. Christina said that they lived in the bedrooms most of the summer, ate most of their meals at the country club and did all the work themselves. She told me that fourteen year old Brenden single-handedly removed all the tile in the living area.

Christina, a very creative crafter, created the wall finish behind their new pellet stove. She said that she gets a lot of her ideas from Pinterest. At one time she had an online business making tutus and bows. Now her dining room is full of holiday gifts that she has made for family and friends.

Brenden, a serious athlete and a freshman at Tehachapi High School, plays Junior Varsity football and baseball. He attends a baseball academy in the Antelope Valley twice a week and has ambitions of playing college baseball.

Keeping watch over the outside of the house are Hunter and Tana, the family Labs while Maltese poodle mix Slugger and Harley take care of the inside.

Welcome to the Porter family. Enjoy the holidays in your new home.

Mike and Robin Kitchens knew that they wanted to retire in Tehachapi and although Mike is still two years away from retirement, they found the perfect home here. They plan to spend the next two years commuting on weekends and holidays from their home in Taft. Mike said that originally they were going to bring just a few of their belongings up to Bear Valley so they could be comfortable but they kept bringing loads and now most of their things are here and the house in Taft has just the bare essentials.

The couple met and became sweethearts at Fillmore High School in Ventura County. Mike was born and raised there and went to work in the oil industry after high school. In the 1980s he worked on the oil platforms off the Ventura/Santa Barbara coast. He has worked for many years on the Phillips 66 pipeline. He worked in Mojave from 1997 to 1999 and during that time the family lived in Tehachapi and knew they wanted to move back someday. Mike is looking forward to spending much of his time here on the golf course.

Robin was born in Glendale, Calif. Her family eventually moved to Fillmore. She has worked for Nabisco as a merchandiser for 17 years and said she will retire the same day Mike does. She loves to garden and ride horses. Although they don’t have horses now, the new house sports a corral and a shelter for a future horse.

They have four grown children, seven grandchildren and a Chihuahua mix named Lucy. A daughter and two grandchildren live in Texas but it is not unusual for all the other five to be at Grandma and Grandpa’s Tehachapi house.

Welcome. We hope you will be able to spend the holidays here in Tehachapi.

If you have moved to the Greater Tehachapi Area within the last six months and would like to know more about your new community, call (661) 822-8188. We will be happy to make an appointment for a hostess to come by and give you lots of helpful information, some valuable coupons, gifts and much more. Many families and individuals who come to the area are pleasantly surprised with the amount of knowledge they gather about their new home. Publishing your welcome article is completely voluntary and is not a requirement of being welcomed.