This happened to us last night, when I was home alone with my 3-yr-old. I didn’t open the door, just a window that looks out on the porch. The guy said he was a friend of our neighbor, “Hank” (we don’t have a neighbor named Hank), and he was there to ask for support for Orange County baseball. He carried no clipboard, or anything else.

My husband just called the sheriff about it, but the sheriff’s office said they have no knowledge of incidents like this where people are casing houses for future burglaries. Go figure.

I had a situation about two weeks ago where a 30ish looking guy came up to my porch not realizing I was watching him. He was looking in my window and bending down to look at a bag on my porch. When I made my presence known he said that he was with AT&T (yea, right). No shirt with the logo or any identification, so I called the sheriff. However, they told me that there had been quite a few similar reports recently, but there just aren’t enough cars available to check these situations out right away.

This happened to us mid-afternoon today. The person appeared to be a white male around 17 years old, 5’8″, 170-180lbs., with light brown short hair. He said he was a neighbor who was fund-raising as part of a communications class. He needed to talk to 100 neighbors and we were number 87! He said that he was also trying to raise money to go to England so he could take part in a Monty Python workshop. When I told him that we did not want any solicitors, he said the magazines would not be for us but for kids at Children’s Hospital. He was arrogant and scoffed at why I talked to him through a window and not the door. He said he wanted to give me a brochure but wasn’t sure how he could because I would not open my door. He asked whether I knew of any neighbors who would be interested in helping him out, and I told him no. He got very irritated, said some rude comments and stomped off.

This is similar to incidents in our neighborhood (in NE Altadena) during the previous two years in the month of January. I did contact the Altadena sheriff’s station today, and was told they would send a patrol car to pick up this individual for questioning. Obviously, don’t open your door to these people!

What has bugged me for quite a few years are the leaflets and business cards left stuck in our gate and mailbox for contractors etc.
When on vacation we worry about these things piling up and being a tell tale sign of our absence.
There should be some sort of ordinance against that.

I was visiting my mom when a guy showed up claiming to be with Charter and tried to get my mom to give him info about her internet acess, he claimed there was a special available only via the Internet.

When she called me to the door to talk to him, he changed the story and left. Sheriff’s came out and did nothing, said they had another call and would be back and never showed.

We’re in Lower Hastings Ranch and I have counted 9 people in the last two weeks with similar pitches. Always the claim to be college students from “around the corner” or “Mrs. Taylor’s daughter” raising money for a club team or trying to do work for a class (no notebooks or pens). I don’t even listen to the complete pitch and explain we have a policy against giving anyone who comes door to door money, since it’s not safe for us or them. Today was the ninth “kid” (she looked 25, if a day) and she rolled her eyes when I interrupted her and stomped off. I’m SO frustrated with the number of folks who have been by, interrupted dinner, etc. I’m a stay at home/ work at home mom and I am FRUSTRATED.

We’ve had two in the past week. We’re in NW Pasadena, just a block south of the Altadena border. One was a pair of hispanic looking teenagers with the magazine spiel, the other was a pair of (seemingly genuine) Kirby vacuum salesmen. They were wearing ids, anyway. My husband talked to them.

I don’t know about the law in Altadena, since it is a county area, but all door-to-door sales in the city of Pasadena require a vendor permit, so any legit person would likely have one of those. The police are quite happy to come and pick these “kids” up for selling without a permit. I’m sure the sheriffs are too

We just had another solicitor come to our door today with the same magazine sales pitch. She claimed she was a USD or UCSD student for a supposed study abroad program. She was blond and said her name was Melissa Patterson. When I asked her to show me a brochure (which looked like the same one that was flashed to us the other day), she would not do so. I called the Altadena sheriff’s station and the officer took down a description. I did not see any police cars for the next half an hour. I did see a late model black SUV go back down our street with a passenger who looked like this woman. I am really getting tired of scam artists invading our peace and wasting our time. We post “no solicitors” signs, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference to this group of people. It would be helpful if the town council would address this issue of whether Altadena requires vender cards or during a council meeting have a discussion with a sheriff about this matter. Alternatively,perhaps the sheriff’s dept. could hold a community meeting.