Pac-Arts monthly Film Forum now open to non-members
Scott Marks 2:48 p.m., May 23
Vista Stories
As I Lay Dying in jail
A recounting of the arrest of As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis, suspected of attempting to hire a hit man to kill his wife.
Big Lots store in Vista closes after 16 years
The Big Lots store at the Shadowridge Plaza Shopping Center located on Sycamore Road in Vista, is scheduled to close its doors forever on April 15. According to store manager Oliver Cregier, even though the ...
Vista’s illegal parking problem on Poinsettia Avenue
A no-man’s land of code enforcement
On Poinsettia Avenue in Vista, which runs parallel along the westbound side of Highway 78, catering trucks, vehicles for sale, and vehicles parked there to advertise services are a everyday sight from the freeway. According ...
Yellow Deli People: Mellow believers or cult of opportunists?
Turning the clock back 2000 years is no easy task.
The Twelve Tribes religious sect staffs their Yellow Delis with volunteers. Thus, they don’t pay workers’ compensation or minimum wage. Thus, they are in trouble with the IRS.
Buena Vista Park — Arroyo Vista Trail
An urban park opens to a natural, semi-wild area with a creek and a dense riparian forest. No virgin forest, but there's shade in Buena Vista Park.
Happy New Beer: 2012's Best Breweries
There were more new brewery openings than there were months in 2012, and the field is as varied as it is extensive, ranging from veteran brewers looking to challenge the big boys to guys with ...
Give a man a fish...
Vista's Solutions Farms has a staff of formerly homeless people who produce lettuce and tilapia.
Vandals Smash Cars in Vista
Located on the 200 block of Smilax Road Vista, Mariposa Apartments has been the site of countless vehicle damage and vandalism incidents since the spring of 2012. Situated in a park-like setting, the complex is ...
Snails Invade Vista After Recent Rains
Shortly after the rainfall on the weekend of Oct. 19–21, Vista’s (southeastern) Buena Creek area and western Vista, near S. Santa Fe Avenue, were invaded by thousands of small cone-shaped snails. The terrestrial gastropod mollusks ...
Vista Apartment Dweller Did Not Go Easily
It took five deputies, four bean-bag rounds, one taser, and a dog to extract a renter from an apartment in Vista, according to recent testimony in San Diego’s North County Superior Court. Toshio Suzuki, then ...
Red-Light Cameras Go Nuts in Vista
In the busiest part of the day, the traffic lights at the intersection of Santa Fe Drive at Vista Village Drive in downtown Vista went off around 11:50 a.m. on September 14, due to the ...
Side of Judgment
"Isn’t it nice here?” “It’s beautiful,” I said to my friend Jen. I made a sweeping glance of the restaurant’s patio, taking in the coral bougainvillea blossoms, the green leaves cascading from the trellis, and ...
First Lutheran Church Vista
Ramón Zarate was a business administration major before he graduated to God.
False Alarms on Post Office Closures
Earlier this month, the United States Postal Service announced that it had withdrawn its plan to close hundreds of post offices around the country. Two San Diego County post offices were on the list, as ...
Vista Assembly of God
Pastor Steven Myatt intended to become a businessman. But he thought there had to be more to life.
Convicted Killer Dontaye Henderson Gets 80 Years to Life
The mother of murdered 25-year-old Tamara Henderson told the killer, “I forgive you for killing my daughter and I pray for you.... I know that hating you would only eat me up inside.” When convicted ...
Vista Woman Admits Stealing Books From County Libraries
A Vista woman accused of stealing thousands of books from libraries around San Diego County pleaded guilty to one count of “commercial burglary” in the Vista courthouse on February 20. An investigation reportedly started last ...
Suburban Standards
While drilling holes into records, Colin Tappe talks about Standards, a record store he is preparing to open in Vista. “I just wanna do something for North County. That’s where I am, and I like ...
Women Describe Rape and Kidnap in Vista
Two women, 19 and 20 years old, gave testimony in the Vista courthouse on October 19, describing an ordeal during which they said they were kidnapped and raped last May. The women said the 33-year-old ...
Vista Man Taking Out Garbage Reports Graffiti
At a preliminary hearing at the Vista courthouse on August 29, Christian Padilla faced charges for an incident that occurred August 14. On that night, a man taking out the garbage after 10 p.m. saw ...
Highway Shooting in Vista?
On Tuesday, August 30, at approximately 7:10 a.m., a man driving a Dodge minivan summoned police to a Vista gas station because he believed his front passenger side window had been destroyed in a random ...
Vista and Marine Base Post Offices May Shut Down
Last month, the United States Postal Service published a list 3653 post offices to be studied for closure. In San Diego County, two offices are on the list: zip code 92140, located at the Marine ...
It's a Tough Crowd at Vista Boxing Ring
It's a tough crowd. It’s such a tough crowd th at no one believed the repeated messages that the killer left on the victim’s cell phone threatening to “bust a cap” into him. Until Hector ...
Alleged Rapist Pleads Guilty to Lesser Charge, Is Released From Custody in Vista
Giovanni Abarca, 18, pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor, in exchange for dropped felony charges — including rape of an intoxicated person — according to prosecutor Kate Flaherty. Abarca ...
Michael Pines Defends Himself at Arraignment in Vista
Tempers flared in the Vista courthouse on May 17 when 59-year-old Michael Theodore Pines, acting as his own attorney, was brought before a superior-court judge. Prosecutor James Romo said that Pines has filed suits against ...
Vista Skaters Beg for a New Park
A room full of young skaters, their parents, and other supporters of building a skate park in Vista appeared at the city council meeting on May 10. “It is not just a skate park,” said ...
Vista Eases Up on Signage Regulations
The Vista Planning Commission approved an amendment to the city’s sign ordinance on April 19 that would regulate sign-spinners and commercial signs on city sports fields. In October, the city council approved a version that ...
The Yellow Deli's Own People
"Mama, you never yell at us except when you drink coffee.” “That’s why we drink tea,” says Jennifer, “except sometimes.” But Jennifer likes to be called by her religious name, Bathsheba. “It means ‘daughter of ...
Who Is the Dreamer in Vista?
On a Tuesday morning in late September, two 16-year-old girls snuck away from their North County high school. Chica wanted to go home, Nina later said. “I understood that she was going to go home ...
Debbie Sumi Faces DUI Manslaughter Charges in Vista
A woman 4 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 104 pounds was said to be driving with a lethal blood alcohol content when she crashed a car into people on the side of the road ...
San Marcos Man Charged with Possession of Kid Porn
A 37-year-old man videotaped a 12-year-old girl taking off her clothes and then showering in his San Marcos home in 2007, according to prosecutor Keith Watanabe at the Vista Courthouse on Friday, February 18. Marc ...
Nancy Lee Ellis Charged with Encinitas Arson
On February 15, a judge ordered 64-year-old Nancy Lee Ellis held for trial on five different arson charges, four of which are felonies. Ellis is pleading not guilty. Testimony at the preliminary hearing suggested that ...
Former Border Patrol Agent Gamalier Rivera Found Guilty
On Wednesday, February 2, for his hatchet attack on two sleeping persons more than a year ago, former Border Patrol agent Gamalier Rivera was found guilty of assault, causing great bodily injury, and aggravated mayhem. ...
Hatchet Victim Chris Anguiano Testifies Against Attacker
“When I got to the hospital, I coded, I died,” Chris Anguiano testified at the Vista Courthouse on Wednesday, January 26. Before he lost his vision and motor skills, he had worked at Palomar Hospital ...
Marine Michael Wells Returns to Camp Pendleton
There was a tense moment in the Vista Courthouse on January 21 when a superior court judge ordered two Marines to release their 20-year-old prisoner into the custody of San Diego sheriff’s deputies. Michael Wells ...
Accused Gunman Brendan O’Rourke at Vista Courthouse
The man accused of shooting two children at a Carlsbad elementary school three months ago was at the Vista Courthouse today, January 18. Lysette Cox testified that she “was working on the blacktop at Kelly ...
Did Jaws (Joaquin Martinez) Find a New Victim?
Joaquin Martinez was arraigned in the Vista courthouse on Friday, January 6, charged with attempted murder using a home-made weapon to attack another prisoner in the Vista jail. Prosecutor Geoff Allard alleged that Martinez inflicted ...
Vista Permits a Second Tattoo Shop
The Vista Planning Commission granted a special-use permit on January 4, allowing a tattoo shop to open near Thibodo Road and Watson Way. The establishment will be one of two tattoo parlors allowed in Vista...until ...
Angry Customer Breaks Door in Vista
On November 7 at about 9:30 p.m., a customer broke the glass on the front door of the Circle K store on the corner of Shadowridge Drive and Watson Way in Vista. According to a ...
Vista Residents Want North County Transit Trains to Lay Off the Horns
Mark Martin's alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. The alarm is an air horn on the Sprinter rail line one mile from his Vista home. That sound has been the wake-up call ...
Carlsbad Teen Staggers into Traffic, Then Rescued
At around 9:00 p.m. on September 6, a delivery driver for the Pizza Hut on Cannon Road stopped for a girl who stepped off the curb against a red light. She was in her late ...
Tag, You're It
The City of Vista has worked hard to abate graffiti. In 2008, the city hired artists to paint murals along the Sprinter light rail corridor as a way to deter taggers from leaving their marks ...
Begged for His Life
A Vista man who befriended a fellow marijuana user reported being robbed by his new acquaintance in Vista on Thursday, San Diego County sheriff's investigators said. Officers were called to the 1200 block of Buena ...
Can't Drink Gas
During a public hearing on March 9, the Vista City Council reviewed an appeal of the planning commission’s approval for a proposed ARCO AM/PM at the North Santa Fe Village shopping center located on the ...
Bowling and Brawling
Located off the 78 Freeway in Vista, at 435 West Vista Way, is the Vista Entertainment Center, a megaplex of adult fun and games. Inside are 40 bowling lanes, an arcade room, a Karaoke machine, ...
Tag — You're It
According to a sheriff's press release, deputies arrested a prolific graffiti tagger at his Vista home on December 28. The 16-year-old suspect was booked into the San Diego Juvenile Detention Facility on 232 counts of ...
No Sell Motel
The Vista City Council decided on December 8 to follow through on a plan to increase sales-tax revenue by purchasing four properties, including the site of North County Ford, then leasing the land back to ...
Computer Creeper
“Hubert Dymitr Haraszewski Jr. molested me while were in a cave at San Onofre State Beach in October 2007,” the teenage victim testified on December 3 in a Vista courtroom. “We went in the cave ...
The Anti-Sonic Burger
On Monday, November 2, the second Sonic Drive-In in San Diego County opened for business on the corner of Broadway and South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista. Like the Santee location, this time North County ...
411 on the 442
On October 24, the new 442 area-code overlay plan was implemented by the Public Utilities Commission. As a result, all local and long distance calls in the 760 area code will require the use of ...
