TEMECULA - Cathy Lange can vividly remember stepping outside of her house one morning in late January to find it pelted with eggs and covered in toilet paper.

"When I first saw it, I thought, 'Oh my goodness, someone got the wrong house. My children are 6 and 3,' - until I saw my car,' Lange said this week.

That's when she noticed gum in the locks and what she believed was Vaseline on the wipers.

She said she had a sinking suspicion that the culprits were some fellow mothers from her son's school who didn't like her. She said a neighbor who witnessed the incident confirmed her fears.

"It is one of the things you can't wrap your mind around," Lange said. "Grown adults doing this."

With her neighbor's help, she identified one of the women who allegedly vandalized her home, she said, adding she met the woman through the PTA at her son's school, Paloma Elementary.

Lange lives in the Paloma del Sol area. Told by Temecula Valley Unified School District officials that it was a "neighborhood squabble," she said she turned to the Temecula Valley Council PTA.

Susan Elliott, the council's president, said this week that everything Lange requested as a result of the incident has been granted. The woman in question, who could not be reached for comment, agreed to pay for the damages, step down from PTA activities and apologize to Lange, Elliott said.

It was a bad prank that she doesn't condone, but it had nothing to do with the PTA, Elliott said.

"They do a phenomenal job over there," Elliott said of the Paloma Elementary School PTA. "This (is about) two women who didn't get along, and they happened to be in the PTA."

Lange agrees that the school's PTA is hard-working and effective, but said she has removed herself from the group since this incident, a decision she said she may revisit in a few years.

"I kept it as quiet as I could," Lange said. "When people started hearing what happened, it kind of spiraled. It was uncalled for and childish. It really affected my family. … My son was very upset."

She said she is not pressing charges because the woman in question agreed to pay damages.

"She did it because I annoy her; that was her reasoning," Lange recalled of a conversation with the woman after the incident.

It was unclear how an ongoing school PTA election may have also played a role. Lange said she had been running for a position but has since withdrawn her name.

"You want to retaliate, and at the same time you don't want to sink to that level," Lange said. "There was no doubt it was done maliciously. It's a sad thing; it hurt my feelings a lot."

Dianne Killingsworth, another mother involved in the Paloma PTA, said the incident is troubling.

"It's one thing when you are in high school to throw toilet paper on someone's house, but now, as mature adults, moms are supposed to be setting examples for their kids," Killingsworth said.

Killingsworth added the incident was isolated and should not reflect poorly on the school's PTA.

"Yes, they were PTA members, but they are also parents," she said.

- Contact staff writer Jennifer Kabbany at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jkabbany@californian.com.