Fire captain forges a new link between Fallbrook and Temecula

A fire captain who has one foot in Temecula and another in Fallbrook might help forge a new link between the nearby communities.

But the appointment of Gregory Mann to a key Temecula post will also help underscore the contrasts between the communities that once mirrored each other along a remote stretch of a winding, two-lane roadway.

"There are a lot of differences," Mann noted during a recent interview. "There isn’t a lot of crossover. They are different animals."

The two communities have followed different paths since the region was forever altered by the arrival of a broad, buzzing interst...