What part of CA were you in?
I used to have a lot of relatives just east of El Paso but time has thinned their ranks.
We lived in San Marino 1988-1990. Pasadena 1997. Claremont 2002. Rancho Cucamonga 2005-2007. Claremont 2012-2013. Claremont is like Mayberry! Lovely little college town. You are safe walking there alone at night, great village.
Husband is chemical engineer with Dow Chemical, and these were all temp relocations as they were designing chemical plants to be built here. Last time we contracted with Technip while doing design work, using their engineers etc to do the design.
Now the engineers are working with Fluor in Sugar Land Texas on this new design. They have worked with Braun, and Brown & Root in the past, too. These are multi million dollar chemical plants.