A former write-in candidate for Arizona governor who flew to Ukraine in May to meet his internet date was discovered last week among homeless people at a train station in the small Ukrainian town of Chernovtsy, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Cary Dolego, 53, refused to abort his love quest, saying he still hopes to meet the local woman whom he had missed on a date, and the only help from U.S. authorities he asks for is to unfreeze his bank account that was blocked several months ago, the report said.
“Her name was Yulia,” he said on a video shot by a local television channel and posted on Youtube on Monday. “She would probably not recognize me because I was wearing a very distinctive Russian hat.”
In the video, Dolego, a two-time divorced father of three grown children, is shown sitting on a bed in a Chernovtsy hospital ward. He produces a big black fur hat and puts it on. The hat covers most of his face.
Komsomolskaya Pravda said that Dolego was found by local charity volunteers who help the homeless during the bitter cold. He had shown them his U.S. passport, and he was carrying a bag with a single decent suit, the paper reported.
Dolego was placed in a local social center but then moved to a hospital to be treated for pneumonia. He was staying there as of Tuesday, according to the paper.
Last November, Dolego ran for Arizona governor from the Green Party as a write-in candidate. Having made preservation of wildlife in the United States and beyond, employment and the rights of children key issues of his campaign, he finished sixth with less than of 0.01 percent of the vote.
In August, Dolego was featured in an ABC News show on international matchmaking.
"I think you'll agree, Svetlana is an absolutely gorgeous female. She's close to 6 feet tall and 140 pounds,” he was shown then as saying. “And Yulia actually is, as you can see in these pictures, a very, very attractive female.”
"The ladies in the Ukraine are known for being … marriage-minded,” Dolego added.
He told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he had arrived to Sevastopol in May, but shortly after it his bank account was frozen and his landlady evicted him. He moved to Chernovtsy then, where one of his internet dates lived, and settled at the local train station, along with other homeless people.
