LEWISTON - It appears to be a form of human trafficking and it also is apparently happening in the Valley.

At least one local woman thinks so. She says she stared it right in the face.

"John" is back in his home of Pensacola, Florida now, a change from two weeks ago.

"I was sitting on my porch and I was talking on my cell phone, and this young kid was walking up my driveway," said Carrie Jacobs.

John was selling magazines door to door in the Valley, or so he said. He told Jacobs he was in a contest, on a point system, working for a trip to the nation's capital.

“I said, no, I'm not interested," said Jacobs.

He told April Wade something similar, but with a different back-story.

"He was a couple credits away from getting his bachelor's degree, and that he transferred to LCSC," said Wade. "He just got married, he has a baby girl that's two months old, he's staying at the Econolodge."

But was John the scam artist or the victim of a bigger one?

"'You're working so hard at it," Jacobs said she told John. "’What's in it for you? I want to know.' And he got real nervous and kind of fidgeted around and he said, 'I'll get to eat today.'"

Jacobs figures out this type of thing for a living, as a client services director at Life Choices Clinic in Clarkston. She said she asked if John wanted out and that he said yes. He also agreed to be interviewed by Jacobs.

In that interview he said he first answered an ad in his hometown classifieds, with a promise to travel the U.S. He was given a bus ticket, direct to Lewiston. When he got here, he was told he would be selling magazines door to door.

"If they ask you questions like, ‘are you from here?’ Do you go to school here?’, you automatically say yes, because if you're from somewhere else, a lot of people are going to frown upon it,” John said. “A lot of people want to help a kid in a contest, and that's what they think they're doing."

He said they follow a script. Trying to win a trip, using certain types of coercion, and only accepting cash. This for a stay at the local Econolodge, and $20 a day for food. Jacobs said John told her he felt like he was under the control of a pimp, his belongings locked in a room at the motel, and only accessed with one of his employers present.

Lewiston Police Chief Steve Orr said police hadn't had reports of human trafficking in the Valley, but Jacobs said she thinks it certainly fits the definition.

"We hear about it," said Jacobs. "That it's far away, and in another country and another place. It is happening on our streets, and it is happening to our children."

Jacobs took John to the YWCA, who helped him get a bus ticket back to Pensacola, but before he boarded, John had advice for Valley residents.

"If somebody comes by and is selling magazines and has a PO Box," said Jacobs. "What would you suggest saying to them?"

"Don't buy a magazine," said John. "There are a lot of kids out there today, there's tens of thousands out there doing this and there's a lot of them that probably want to go home, but they're too scared to do anything about it."

John said the group he was with was headed to Boise next.

Police advise residents to be cautious of high-pressure sales at all times - scams or not.