TEMECULA - Between the freshly laid green sod and the pale-blue wooden siding, Roger Sannipoli stands on the shapes of grapes and vine leaves etched into the grey cement beneath his feet. As he looks at the refurbished one-story house, which abuts the chaparral-covered hills on the western edge of Old Town, Sannipoli reflects back to when he first laid eyes on the home.

"This place was such a dump," he said of the structure built in 1925. "The previous owner vandalized the home so badly. She stole the copper pipes out of the walls, stole the toilets, the doors and the heating unit. The walls and the ceiling were ripped apart. This place was bad. But we saved it."

"We" would be Sannipoli and his 80-year-old father, Al Sannipoli, who initially bought the property in 2006. The other part of "we" is the congregation of the neighboring church, Iglesia Bautista del Valle de Temecula.

The church now owns the house.

For the last two years, "they" have put sweat, money and hard work into fixing up the home once owned by Albert Nienke, a noted Temecula resident.

In its new life, the old house will serve as the office for the church that has been holding services on Pujol Street since 2001.

The pastor, Salvador Carrillo, said there are roughly 300 members in the church's congregation and besides having more indoor space, the house offers a half-acre of outdoor space that the parishioners can make use of.

"We really needed the space to expand," he said.

More than 40 of the church members donated their time and skills to fixing up the house, making the renovation effort more personal, he said.

Ruth Carrillo, the pastor's wife, said the project has been a triumph for the church and the Sannipolis who turned the run-down house from an eyesore into an appealing landmark.

"This place was so awful," Ruth Carrillo said, recalling the tall weeds and garbage that once filled the yard of the house. For a period, the backyard was also used as a toilet by the previous owners, she said.

But the original owner of the house - the man for whom the house was built - was a much more revered resident. Sannipoli who formally served on the Temecula Valley Historic Society, said the house was built for Nienke.

Nienke had come to Temecula in 1915 and opened a lumberyard across from the Palomar Inn. In 1929, he leased the corner by the Main Street Bridge and built a campground, rental cabins and service station, according to the book "Temecula: At the Crossroads of History," by Phil Brigandi.

Some of the best descriptions of Nienke come from the writings of Erle Stanley Gardner. One of Temecula's most famous residents, Gardner, who penned a series of books about the crime-fighting lawyer Perry Mason, forged a special relationship with Nienke.

When Gardner came to Temecula in 1937, the first person he met was Nienke. Gardner wrote about the meeting in the Winter 1967 edition of "The High Country."

"Nienke was a rugged, raw-boned German with an old-fashioned type of honesty and a sincerity that so permeated his being that there wasn't any room for the faintest trace of dissimulation," Gardner wrote.

Throughout the Great Depression, Nienke served on the board of directors for the First National Bank of Temecula. A Mexican restaurant occupies that building, which still stands at the corner of Old Town Front and Main streets. Gardner also documented Nienke's work with the bank.

"… When it came to serving on the board of directors of a bank, Nienke, with his rugged, two-fisted honesty, his uncompromising recognition of work as (a) means of salvation, was an invaluable asset. He would have been an invaluable asset to any bank of any size in any city anywhere," Gardner wrote.

"That bank went through the entire depression without foreclosing on any ranch in the community. In many ways it was a wonderful institution. It was wonderful for the morale of the community. The people knew they had an absolutely square, sympathetic bank."

Sannipoli said keeping stories of Temecula's past alive and fostering the spirit of the city's past for new generations to discover has been one of the most rewarding parts of the renovation. He said knowing the house is now in the care of the Carrillos and their church is an extra bonus.

"This used to be 'the' house in Old Town, and now it is again. Oldtimers in the 1930s used to call Pujol Street the Beverly Hills of Temecula," Sannipoli reminisced as he stood inside the home surrounded by the new white walls illuminated by sunlight. "It feels so good to save another one."

Contact staff writer Nicole Sack at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2616, or nsack@californian.com.