PLACERVILLE . INFO

Chris Loesel, a San Francisco native, knew that she and her husband and daughters had outgrown their 960-square-foot home in San Carlos, but they were trapped.

Bay Area housing costs kept them from buying anything larger. Better schools for their children, ages 5 and 7, were another concern. Chris researched school districts in affordable locations, looking for high test scores, and El Dorado Hills, a community 25 miles east of Sacramento, caught her attention. The Loesels, who are in their 40s, moved there five years ago.

A front-page story in the Sacramento Bee in July 2000 reported that a growing number of Bay Area professionals were cashing out their homes and migrating to gated subdivisions in El Dorado Hills, lured by spacious houses, highly ranked schools and a less-congested setting. The article highlighted a family of four from San Francisco settling into a six-bedroom, 5 1/2-bath, 5,400-square-foot villa and painted a rosy picture of satisfied couples willing to accept the long-distance commute. A representative from a real estate research firm claimed that El Dorado Hills would be the next Danville.

"We went from living in a giant closet to a house three times the size," Chris Loesel said.

The move came at a price. Chris Loesel, who had a demanding job as a court reporter in Redwood City, was able to quit and stay home with her daughters, but husband Robert, a salesman for a machine component manufacturer, continued to work and live in the Bay Area five days a week. He stayed with relatives.

The Loesels endured the separation, hanging on to the hope that Robert's company would move or he could change jobs. When neither of those things happened and four years had passed, Chris realized her marriage was in trouble. The lack of daily support from her husband had taken its toll.

"He left at 3 a.m. Monday morning and returned by 11 p.m. Friday night,'' she said. While he was gone, she was burdened with all the responsibilities of a single parent. "I was angry and resentful when he came home, and by the time I warmed up to him, he was out the door again."

Their daughters went through what Chris refers to as a grieving process every time he left. "It reminded me of the grief I felt when I was 11 and my father passed away," she said. Weekends were compromised by outside chores that had piled up. Instead of spending time with his kids, Robert was forced to do yard work. He admits that his absence was stressful for everyone.

"I didn't anticipate that it would go on that long,'' he said. "But I had fears about money. Positions outside the Bay Area don't pay as well. I tried to play two roles, and I lost continuity with my family." He conceded that his parenting skills suffered. "If you're not there for your kids, they don't respect you as much," he said.

The Loesels are separated. Chris places much of the blame on the long-distance commute. She never got used to Robert's job obligation so far from home coming before the family's needs. Robert says, in hindsight, he wouldn't recommend the living apart/commuting lifestyle to anyone else. "But everyone has a different idea about what really matters," he said.

Two and a half years ago, Tom and Johanne Yee and their two daughters joined the surge of Bay Area families relocating to El Dorado Hills. Tom, who owned and operated Concord Indoor Sports Center before the move, said that 80 percent of his neighbors are from the Bay Area and confirmed that many people moving to El Dorado Hills bring their Bay Area equity with them, buying homes triple the size of those they left behind. "Then they get into a cycle of upgrading with swimming pools, expensive cars, granite tabletops ... it's crazy," he said.

The Yees' decision to move was based on education, not square footage, and they didn't sell their home in Daly City; they're renting it out. They were unhappy with the choice of middle schools in their district, and spent two years on a waiting list for a new district. Tom searched the Internet for California schools with good academic rankings, and El Dorado Hills popped up. The Yees visited several classrooms and liked what they saw. "We interviewed school principals before we looked at a single home,'' Tom said.

Tom cares for his 8- and 10-year-old daughters while his wife commutes to her marketing job with Delta Dental. Until recently, she was commuting from El Dorado Hills to her office near Mission and First streets five days a week. She left home at 4 a.m., caught a Greyhound bus in Sacramento and returned to El Dorado Hills by 8 p.m. Now Johanne works closer to home most of the week, but Tom is still the primary caretaker for their daughters. He makes their meals, volunteers in their classrooms, shuttles them to after-school activities and helps with homework.