PropGun, San Diego is a beautiful area to fly around, and some experience in a PA 28 back in the day is fine. In terms of "credit" towards flying now, think of it in two ways: what you can get credit for numerically, and the actual benefit it may carry in terms of retained skills. Numeric (hours) credit is defined. Bear in mind that those are minimums. The regulator does have to state minimum hour requirements, just to have some confidence that a sharp pilot wannabe is not just challenging a flight test.
As for retained skills you may have from 17 hours of flying 20 years ago.... not much. Sure, some will come back, but the important skills are perishable in much less time than that. There's a reason that most flying clubs want you to fly at least once a month, which parallels most insurers, who generally get antsy if you have flown less than 15 hours in the last year. I have mentored a number of returning to flying (now that they could afford it) pilots, who were short on recency, and provided advanced type training for others. The common gap I have seen is skills in unusual attitudes and emergencies, then easy task saturation. My better candidates (one, a 7000 hour airline pilot at the time) have said, I have flying experience and a license, but let's approach this without credit for either, and see how we do. That's the attitude I like to see in a pilot who strives for safety!