The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : Subpoenas Served With Smiles, Tricks

The brightly-colored envelopes appeared on the desks of every employee at the massive Los Angeles computer company on Valentine’s Day. Expecting a holiday treat, each employee unsealed the package and pulled out--a subpoena.

Score one for Stephen Raheb, whose job includes serving unwilling witnesses with subpoenas and other court documents.

As part of a wrongful dismissal suit, Raheb had to serve hundreds of the complainant’s former co-workers, none of whom were eager to get dragged into court and possibly risk their jobs.

But he’s got a heart, too. “We put candy in because we wanted to give them something good,” recalled Raheb, the 30-year-old owner of Attorney Related Services of Sherman Oaks.

“L.A. Law” it isn’t. But Raheb’s company, and others like it across the nation, perform a crucial service in the legal world, filing court papers and forms for attorneys and tracking down witnesses and parties to serve with those papers.

The clerical end of the job is tedious, but it’s compensated for by the adventure of serving unwilling witnesses.

Raheb started serving documents 10 years ago, when he was assisting in a law firm and realized how much time and effort service took.

Now he’s hooked, despite being in a line of work that requires him to be on the job at inconvenient hours--so he can catch targets at home--and takes him to the most dangerous reaches of the city on a regular basis.

“It’s fun,” Raheb said. “I don’t see myself doing this when I’m 60, but I’m not sure.”

For Raheb to successfully serve a subpoena he must verify the party’s identity and leave the court document with that person. That leaves two outs for Raheb’s targets: stay out of his reach or deny their identity.

That can lead to some hair-raising moments, like the time he served the owner of a Saugus restaurant with an order to appear in court to forfeit his assets.

The restaurateur chased Raheb through his establishment and tripped him. Too late, he was served.

Usually, the job is less physical. Raheb says he has several techniques to get access to elusive targets.

He appears at their offices posing as a deliveryman, armed with a bouquet of flowers, box of pizza or an envelope containing “an important message” for the party’s eyes only.

Other times he stakes out his quarries’ homes. One time he noticed a “For Sale” sign posted at a house and posed as an prospective buyer. He looked over the house, and on his way out handed over a subpoena.

Most subjects, he says, deserve the deception he uses because they try to shirk their legal duty.

“I hate to deceive these people,” he said, “but if they were just upfront about their obligations this wouldn’t happen.”

Though he is usually unaware of the details of a case, Raheb gets some idea of the circumstances by reading the documents he serves.

And although he relishes the pursuit of his quarry, some moments can be emotionally grueling, Raheb says.

He recalls a divorce filing he had to serve on a West Los Angeles woman.

Raheb arrived at the woman’s house only to find the husband--who had filed for the divorce--there alone.

His wife, the husband told Raheb, was out shopping, and didn’t know he was divorcing her.

Just then a car pulled into the driveway. “Go get her,” the husband said. Raheb did.

“She was devastated,” Raheb recalled.