INNER JOIN On On Multiple Columns

I'm trying to eliminate all records that do not have one of two conditions. I'm using INNER JOIN on a derived "table", not a table in my database. The code below summarizes what I'm trying to do. Please note that this is an extremely simplified query.

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SELECT * FROM jobs
INNER JOIN
(
SELECT contact_id FROM contacts WHERE deleted = 0
)AS ValidContacts
ON (jobs.owner = ValidContacts.contact_id OR jobs.assignee = ValidContacts.contact_id)

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This works fine when the the "SELECT contact_id FROM contacts WHERE deleted = 0" part returns a small number of records, however when that part returns a very large number of records, the query hangs and never completes. If I remove one of the conditions for the JOIN, it works fine, but I need both. Why doesn't this work?

Another possible solution is if I were to use "WHERE/IN" like this:

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SELECT * FROM jobs
WHERE owner IN (SELECT contact_id FROM contacts WHERE deleted = 0)
OR assignee IN (SELECT contact_id FROM contacts WHERE deleted = 0)

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This would work fine, but I don't want to have to run the "SELECT contact_id FROM contacts WHERE deleted = 0" part twice (since in my real code, it is much more complicated and performance is a big issue". Any help would be greatly appreceated.

I'm using SQL Server 2000 on Windows XP Pro.