A politician's fall from grace can be hard, but perhaps no one has fallen harder than former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Cary Dolego, who was recently found homeless and disheveled in a train station in Ukraine, Komsomolskaya Pravda Ukraine Tuesday.
Volunteer workers in the town of Chernovtsy, near the Romanian border, made the shocking discovery when they approached a group of homeless people in the station, and an "exceptionally unkempt" man responded in fluent English and presented an American passport. Dolego, 53, then opened his suitcase to reveal a notebook computer and a clean suit, volunteer Anastasia Beridze said.
Dolego told aid workers a harrowing story of love and delusion that began with an Internet friendship with a woman named Yulia, who invited him to Ukraine in May to share his "innovative research" on aviation and shipping safety. But Yulia did not show up at an arranged meeting in Chernovtsy, and after Dolego's debit card was blocked, he found himself broke and alone in a freezing train station.
A former official with the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Dolego ran as a write-in candidate for the Green Party in gubernatorial elections in 2010. He and two other write-in candidates received about 0.1 percent of the , which was won easily by Republican Jan Brewer.
On his Facebook , Dolego describes himself as a "single man, 6'1" and 200lbs" [sic]. "I enjoy staying healthy, enlarging my circle of friends, and increasing my knowledge and appreciation for other people's perspectives in life," he writes.
Dolego is currently recovering from his ordeal at a local hospital in Chernovtsy, where doctors say he has told them about an invention that helps airplanes avoid dangerous pockets of air.
