Column: Retired Judge Lance Ito's weekly ritual — paying homage to his late wife

Lance Ito drove slowly up the hill under the hazy light of a Los Angeles summer morning, past rows of graves, hoping to run into some of the regular visitors he's gotten to know in the last two years at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

Nobody was around, though, so the retired judge — who presided over the 1995 murder trial of O.J. Simpson — parked and walked over to inspect his wife's resting place. Margaret "Peggy" York died on Oct. 17, 2021, at 80, after an illness. A knee-high U.S. flag is planted at the corner of York's gravestone, which features raised etchings of her likeness and of the LAPD badge she wore.

York had been a radio dispatcher first, then entered the police