Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series examining growth in El Dorado Hills.

Recent headlines about murder, prostitution and drug busts may be commonplace in large cities, but the trend seems to be catching up to this rural community.

El Dorado Hills is home to 36,000, many of whom moved here to escape drug problems, heavy crime and heavier traffic in larger metropolitan areas.

Newcomers aside, how has El Dorado Hills fared in the eyes of the citizens who’ve lived here for years and what is the envisioned the town becoming? Responses are mixed, but all in all, few are ready to escape to perceived greener pastures, though they admit to some disappointments in what the community has become.

Holly Wolfe, who owns her own graphic design shop, lives in El Dorado Hills but does little here other than going with her husband to the local 14-screen cinema. Almost all of her shopping is done in Folsom, where she finds a variety of large stores and a broad selection of the products and services they sell.

She even does most of her grocery shopping in Folsom, only occasionally slipping into the nearby Safeway supermarket on Francisco Drive.

“We do go to the art festivals in El Dorado Hills. We like to support those,” said Wolfe, 44, who moved here from Chicago, where she said she saw less crime than has occurred recently in El Dorado Hills.

“We like Town Center, we just don’t go there that often,” she added. “Our impression is everything in El Dorado Hills is marked up to prices that meet the perceived demographic.”

Overall, said Wolfe, she’s fond of her older Lake Hills Estate neighborhood and its many parties and activities, plus the five-minute walk to Folsom Lake.

“I like El Dorado Hills. I think it’s a great place to live and it’s worked out fine,” she said.

Still, she and her husband have been thinking for several years about moving to Cameron Park and may put their home up for sale when the real estate market returns.

Augusto Bianchi, 72, a retired international banker who moved to El Dorado Hills from the Bay Area, considers the town “fine, from an aesthetic point of view.”

He especially likes the growth of greenery since he and his wife Rosalie moved to Serrano in 2001.

“The trees are fantastic,” he said.

But after eight years here, he finds the natives less than friendly.

“The only thing negative I can say is the social aspect, even belonging to a country club, is fairly constricted. Friendliness doesn’t exist, really. I find people here to be stand-offish. They’re either socially inept or just shy,” he contended.

Traffic? The native of Italy laughs at that common complaint in El Dorado Hills.

“It’s nothing, compared with Europe at large and Italy in particular,” Bianchi said. For El Dorado Hills, “I wouldn’t even call it traffic.”

Al Johnson, 79, who’s lived in El Dorado Hills with his wife Monica, 74, for 32 years, has an opposite view of local friendliness.

“Even as it’s grown, the town has maintained a hometown feel,” he said. “People are extremely friendly here, in contrast to what it was in Los Angeles.”

“People call you by your name. There’s a genuine-ness of the people here, compared with big cities,” noted the retired former Army paratrooper.

He’s also a retired teacher, entrepreneur, salesman, lobbyist, political fund-raiser and head of California’s 1976 national bicentennial observance. A store and deli the Johnsons owned is now The Purple Place Bar & Grill on Green Valley Road.

The couple bought a lot in the Ridgeview section of El Dorado Hills and built the home in which they still reside.

Johnson did not vote for El Dorado Hills to incorporate as a city but now has second thoughts.

“I’m beginning to think I made a mistake,” he said.