San Clemente Ca

When Richard Nixon made San Clemente his western White House, the late satirist Art Hoppe described the population as "15,000 conservative Republicans, 2,000 surfers, five poor people [and] roughly the same number of liberal Democrats." That was in 1972; today the population is 65,000 or so and it's possible they've chased off the last of the poor people and the liberals. As a matter of politics and philosophy, San Clemente has long been friendly to business, to growth, to builders.

An active-duty Marine was found shot to death Thursday morning in a drainage ditch in a hilly area of San Clemente. The victim was wearing desert fatigues commonly used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his hat was found nearby, Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. The man was shot in the upper torso and was lying face down, Amormino said. Investigators believe he was killed near where he was found.

The decomposing bodies of five family members were found Sunday in a home in a gated San Clemente neighborhood, authorities said. The bodies were believed to have been in the house overlooking the Pacific for up to two weeks, but it was not immediately known how the victims died, said Orange County Sheriff's Lt. Erin Giudice. Relatives discovered the bodies just before 4 p.m. at the Sea Pointe Estates house.

The bodies of five family members found in a San Clemente home over the weekend were dressed in black, Orange County sheriff's officials said Wednesday. But deputies do not believe the attire had anything to do with something unusual such as a cult, said Sheriff's Lt. Erin Giudice. "Nothing odd like that," Giudice said, but she added that investigators were continuing to search the home for clues, including a note or something left on a computer that could explain the deaths.

Carol Evans remembers watching the sun sink into the ocean from her San Clemente sun room. "You could see the palm trees, beautiful oranges and golds. . . . It was gorgeous," she said. Until the neighbors added a second story. Now, most of her ocean vista is obscured by a house. Sometimes, she said, she can glimpse the water through their open doors.

Gia Lugo knows all about the gang turf battles in southern Orange County. So when she taught school in San Clemente, she was careful not to let students know that she lived in San Juan Capistrano. And she never told people in San Juan where she worked. "I was afraid to have a SJC sticker on my car because it might get tagged or vandalized," said Lugo, 36, who has lived in San Juan most of her life and remembers gangs in junior high.

An anti-illegal-immigration group's Adopt-a-Highway sign was re-posted this week on Interstate 5 near the Border Patrol checkpoint in San Clemente after a federal judge ruled that it did not pose a danger to the public. State transit officials had moved the San Diego Minutemen's sign to a less-busy highway in eastern San Diego County, saying they were concerned that it would become a gathering place for protesters and clog the busy interstate.

A man found dead at a San Clemente park was identified Thursday as a gang member named in an injunction that barred him and other gangsters from hanging out at the site where he died, authorities said. Juan Montes Jr., 26, of Capistrano Beach had a criminal record that included three convictions since 2006 for offenses, including burglary and possession of a controlled substance, according to court records.

It can be a curse, the neighbors discovered, to move onto the well-heeled, palm-festooned San Clemente lane next to Richard Nixon's former home. Christopher Arndt and Maureen Doyle despised what local historians describe as the former Western White House's security wall, which bisects their backyard. The couple whittled a door into the red-tile-capped barrier to reach the rest of their property. Their next-door neighbor, Richard Osman, loathed the wall too.

A man suspected of stealing tens of thousands of dollars in pain-relief pills from Orange County pharmacies was arrested Thursday as he entered a Huntington Beach pharmacy. The arrest of Brian Dow Fleming, 38, came just hours after a fast-working bandit -- suspected to be him -- cut a hole in the roof a San Clemente pharmacy shortly before midnight Wednesday, escaping with a large stash of drugs in less time than the four minutes it took sheriff's deputies to respond to the building's alarm.