A method for determining (36) whether a location associated with a wireless station, such as a cellular telephone (28), is located within an area of interest. The area of interest is defined using a quadtree representation of an area that includes the area of interest and identifying nodes within the quadtree that represent the area of interest. By iterative comparison of the location (60A-60N) associated with the wireless station (28) to the locations associated with a node at each level of the quadtree, a determination can be made as to whether or not the location associated with the wireless station is within the area of interest.