So cool, so classic, so L.A.

IF ever there were a home that told the quintessential L.A. success story, this is it. Not because the 1923 house on a shady San Marino street is classic Spanish Revival, with a russet tile roof and white stucco walls. Or that the interior is a visual surprise, open and contemporary, with flourishes of petrified wood and other natural materials. Or even that an imaginative sharp-angled pavilion shading the backyard pool somehow blends seamlessly with the main house.

It's because of the story that lives inside, the story of Cisco Pinedo -- born in a rural village in Jalisco, Mexico, raised in urban South Los Angeles and now leader of a multimillion-dollar home furnishings company, one of the few major furniture manufacturers that hasn't fled Southern California in search of less expensive factories and labor overseas. Pinedo's roots are now in L.A., and if anyone asks why, he can simply point to his house, which symbolizes just how far he has traveled to be here.

"I fell in love with this area because of the greenery," says Pinedo, 44, who saw San Marino first as a teenager, working with his dad on gardening jobs at the Huntington Library and the surrounding estates. "Back then I was thinking that one day, if it were possible, this would be a great place to live. It was very far away from where I was, but some way life made that happen."

Hanging on the wall of the master bedroom is a framed wooden cross carved by Pinedo's grandfather. Pinedo keeps it there as a touchstone to the remote village where he was born, Villa Guerrero, a two-hour drive from Guadalajara. He lived with his parents, three brothers and two sisters in a one-room stone dwelling with a wood-and-clay flat roof. "There wasn't a lot of money and people used natural resources," he says.

The son of a contract farm worker who spent months at a time in the United States and a seamstress mother, Pinedo remembers studying the rectangular structure, tracing his hands over the stones and thinking about the laborer who arranged them, piece by piece. Someday, he thought, he'd like to build houses.

"By nature, even before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, we were a culture with a sensibility toward craftsmanship," he says. "There has always been plenty of wood, stone, earth, labor and imagination in Mexico to make beautiful buildings."