"If someone is trying to sell something door to door, they need a permit from the city. It is illegal to do that without a permit," said Capt. John Hirokawa of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department.

Hirokawa said that the Sheriff's Department had noticed that groups of young men usually arrive in the South Bay, stay at local motels and then descend on residential neighborhoods to sell magazine subscriptions.

"I would say that they are rather aggressive in their methods," said Hirokawa. "Sometimes people are intimidated into buying stuff from them."

He said that these groups of men are usually dropped off in a neighborhood by someone driving a van. He said that groups of this nature had been noticed in Saratoga on Oct. 7 and 8 in the Saratoga Woods area but they slipped away before deputies could apprehend them.

Hirokawa said that deputies have been on guard since an incident in Menlo Park on Oct. 6 when Dangelo Langford, a magazine seller, tried to sexually assault an 80-year-old woman. He was arrested a couple of hours later by Palo Alto police. They found that Langford, who is from Georgia, was also wanted on an unrelated charge for assault with a dangerous weapon. The next day police found that another member of the group was a sex offender and had not registered.

Hirokawa said that in the last few years, some magazine sellers had been charged with serious crimes across the country.

Sheriff's deputies in Saratoga are also looking for a man who robbed the Jamba Juice store at the Argonaut Shopping Center recently. He is a white male, 6 feet tall, and was wearing a gray hooded jacket and blue jeans. He appeared to be in his 20s and had blond hair.

Hirokawa said that several units responded to the robbery but were unable to track the person after a point.

On Oct. 11, in another unusual crime for Saratoga, a carjacking that started in San Jose ended in Saratoga on Brookglen Drive. Two teen-aged girls asked for a lift from a 19-year-old girl, who works at a Target store in San Jose. As they were passing through Saratoga, one brandished a knife and held it to the girl's throat while the other girl took out a small handgun. They forced her out and took off with her car, a 1996 red Mercury sedan.

The two girls looked to be of Hispanic origin, according to sheriff's deputies. One had brown hair with blond streaks while the other had black hair.

Anyone with more information about the above incidents is encouraged to call the West Valley Sheriff's Substation at 408.868.6600.