Residents have seen graffiti in the neighborhood from time to time, but only in the form of small tags. They've never seen it in big, bold letters, in a concentrated area and this close to their homes.

Walking down this peaceful, clean, well-landscaped neighborhood, the graffiti was hard to miss. The taggers vandalized a one-block radius of the neighborhood.

"That one's pretty graphic right there; that's a little disturbing," said Cy Haripotepornkul, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years.

The taggers spray painted a four-letter profanity and the same initials on the streets, on the sidewalk, on utility boxes and right at the walkway leading up to one home.

Resident Dan Tarbell didn't know vandals tagged his fence until he walked out front. He said he is worried the tagging may be the work of a gang.

"It's scary. I haven't seen any problems in the area," said Tarbell.

"It seems to me to be an isolated area, an isolated occurrence rather," said resident Fred Vitale.

The vandals spared the kids' playground equipment, but tagged the sidewalks and stairway leading to it and the park's basketball hoop.

"Hopefully, it's not something that continues to get worse," said resident Robert Chung.

In case it does get worse, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department made sure to snap images of the tagging in hopes of identifying a pattern that could possibly lead them to the vandal or vandals. They don't believe the graffiti is gang-related, but rather most likely the work of a group of teens on summer break with nothing else to do.

"I'll call the homeowner's association and ask them if they have any way of removing this quickly," said Tarbell.

The county, which maintains the park, said it will get the graffiti cleaned up right away.