Where the boundaries lie in San Marcos

• San Marcos hides the ugly truth about its schools

• I wonder too about this city I’ve moved to, a chance I took about a decade ago and that now, like all old bets, begins to look either foolish or righteous for reasons that go beyond money. San Marcos seems to suffer from a similar confusion; it isn’t sure what its fate will be. Retired dairy land, bedroom community, college town, a place to raise a family, all these possibilities tend to war with each other (Aug. 27, 1998)

• Frisbee studliness

• I ran into Fergie on the Muir fields at UCSD, and he gave me a nice compliment on my reffing. The day after, Pinz called to ask if I wanted to go play some golf with Daddy, Blackard, Fergie, and some others. Conner's show got 30 minutes on ESPN, and it's already been rebroadcast twice. (July 15, 1999)

• Scavengers find their niches on I-15

• I-15 is the highway of the American dream, San Diego-style. I-5 doesn’t have the growing, striving character 15 does: no MOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes, nothing to keep it moving, evolving. The land rape is pretty much complete on I-5; all that’s left is real estate most of the people who drive it can’t afford. (June 9, 1994)

• DNA: San Diego's tiniest snitch

• String a line back and calculate the blood-splatter angles. There’s a whole [science) called forensic bloodstain pattern interpretation. You go out and look at patterns, come back and use geometry, and then refute things the suspect says — claims about it being self-defense or such (July 20, 1995)

• In the land of shared guilt

• If there's a single plant that'll send me over the edge, it's oleander. No good reason for a Nerium oleander in every third yard in San Diego, but look around and you'll find one. They're one of the dominant flowering plants visible as you drive the canyons. Come down the grade on I-15 from Escondido to North County Fair, and they form a flowering wall between the northbound and southbound lanes. (Aug. 10, 1995)

• Old Town's Pizza Bella man has WWII Italy atrocity story to tell

• Abatecola says that the only German who entered Monte Cassino before the bombing was a commander who happened to be a lay member of the Benedictine order that ran the monastery. "He'd go there for Mass, all by himself. There was never a German within 700 or 800 feet of that monastery. The Allies bombed the hell out of it." (Feb. 19, 1998)

Peterson wrote feature stories for the Reader from 1994 through 1999, and again in 2013.