Desperate job seekers taken for a ride?

Oregon City woman cries foul after a Tigard solicitation firm dumps her 30 miles from home

By Darryl Swan

Pamplin Media Group, May 5, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (22 Reader comments)

Jaime Valdez / The Times

UNHAPPY CAMPER – Ashton Lugar, 20, says she was dropped off in Vancouver, Wash., and not offered a ride home when she refused to work for The Landers Group, a solicitation firm that just opened in Tigard.

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Why would the Tigard branch of a solicitation company that touts itself to prospective employees as a Fortune 500 marketing firm strand a 20-year-old Oregon City woman 30 miles from home?

That’s what Ashton Nicole Lugar wants to know.

It’s also a question at the edge of a legislative concept being kicked around in Salem that focuses on the culture of solicitation firms, which frequently operate at the fringe of business communities and use questionable tactics to rope in vulnerable workers to hustle door-to-door sales.

The Landers Group contacted Lugar at her Oregon City home shortly after she posted her resume on the Hot Jobs Web site. She had just returned to Oregon from active duty in the U.S. Navy, working as the coxswain on a patrol craft at the Mayport Naval Shipyard, near Jacksonville, Fla.

She needed a job — something that would pay her more than the $18,000 annual salary she earned in the service. She has law enforcement aspirations but is also considering office work if the pay is right.

Based in Los Angeles, Calif., The Landers Group, according to its Web site, is a premiere sports marketing outfit, managing accounts for marquee clubs such as the Los Angeles Kings, the Seattle Sonics and, yes, the Portland Trailblazers. A spokesperson for the Trailblazers said the franchise used The Landers Group a couple of years ago in a campaign, but hasn’t used the company since then.

Lugar said it was the promise, however, of working with big, notable organizations that attracted her to the job.

“They called me for the first time and talked about the group and how they work with high-end business people,” Lugar said.

But only after getting deep into the recruitment process did she learn the company’s real business: door-to-door sales solicitations, specializing primarily in coupon peddling.

Lugar’s first meeting at the company’s office at 7000 S.W. Hampton St., Suite 200 — a nondescript office front tucked inside a nondescript business park — went relatively well.

In retrospect, however, Lugar said she should have seen the red flags waving.

There is no outward sign that The Landers Group inhabits the office location. A receptionist greets incoming calls to the company by announcing it as a generic “marketing firm.” Other than the Web site and the contacts made with prospective workers, there are few signs that the company even exists.

Tonja Marcovic, who manages the Tigard office, seemed impressed with Lugar and suggested a second interview a week later, Lugar said. At that point, Lugar said she was led to believe she would meet higher-ups in the company who would determine her fitness to work for The Landers Group.

“They set it up right then, and they told me what day to be there,” Lugar said.

When Lugar returned, she was asked to sign a waiver stating that she was a prospective employee, agreeing to spend a full day getting an education in the field of marketing without pay.

“That was plausible,” she said.

She was also asked to leave her cell phone behind — a possible distraction during the meetings — as she and three other prospects settled into a 1990s-model Nissan that was used to carry them up I-5 and into Vancouver, Wash.

For Lugar, the whisper of alarm grew louder and louder.

“We were driving up to Vancouver, and the guy who is driving starts handing me these coupons, and he says, ‘Do you see these?’” Lugar said. The other passengers were dropped off at a separate location leaving Lugar alone with the driver.

That’s about the time the truth of her situation hit her.

“So he dropped these people off, and I was like, wait a minute, are you a solicitor?” Lugar asked. “I was like, I don’t want to do this at all, I’m not going to work for you for free.”

Lugar said the driver gave her two options: hang out with him for the eight-hour shift or find her own way home. She opted for the latter.

“They dropped me off in Vancouver with no phone and no money in my pocket,” she said.

The driver did allow Lugar to use his cell phone to call her father, who had to leave work early to pick her up.

In a report filed with the Tigard Police Department, Lugar and her father questioned whether the The Landers Group’s actions were akin to kidnapping. Because there was no evidence of illegal activity, however, the responding officer took the complaint for informational purposes only.

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