By Patric Hedlund and Gary Meyer

A Three Points man with ties to the Lebec and Frazier Park area has been reported missing. The family is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to his whereabouts. Dennis Dobrovolny, 54 was last seen by friends at a February 6 Super Bowl Sunday party in Three Points (on Highway 138, at the southern boundary of Tejon Ranch near Neenach, where Centennial is planned).

Dobrovolny is described as 5 feet, 11 inches tall, 185 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.

His family members, who live in Long Beach and Ojai, have been working in teams to spread flyers with his photo from Lancaster through Neenach to Lebec and Frazier Park. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office has assigned a team of homicide detectives to the case. They have searched the area with dogs, towed a car to check for evidence, including fingerprints and possible blood.

These details were explained in an interview at The Mountain Enterprise on Sunday, March 6 with Dennis Dobrovolny’s son, Jeff, and daughter-inlaw Anne Marie.

“Yesterday we had my sister from Long Beach, my mother, stepfather, my cousin, her boyfriend, my wife, me and two friends, passing out the flyers from Lancaster to Frazier Park, all day. We divided up the map, and will do it again next weekend if we have to,” Jeff said.

Jeff Dobrovolny is an articulate industrial electrician with four children who works 50 to 70 hours a week, he said, but he has been coming up to the Mountain Communities every day for two weeks after work, talking with people and looking for leads that may be helpful in finding his father.

“He’s exhausted, but it is his dad,” Anne Marie said.

Dennis Dobrovolny has worked as a caretaker on an almond ranch in Three Points for six years. “He cleaned up the property and has kept it trim,” Jeff said, adding that his father is a hard worker.

Jeff Dobrovolny said his father is very close to his family—his children, grandchildren, siblings and nieces—and that they visit together frequently, sharing dinners and family outings.

“Dad is a motorcycle enthusiast,” Jeff smiled. He said his dad likes to ride his motorcycle on the back roads between Frazier Park and Ojai to visit his aunt, Dennis’ younger sister.

They said the family researched another case in which a Mountain Communities man went missing. It was late in October 2009 when Jukka Hellsten, 42, was reported missing by Alyce Coleman, a friend of Dennis Dobrovolny’s. Hellsten was living with Coleman at the time.

Hellsten’s family and friends canvassed the Mountain Communities area, passing out flyers and searching for leads. His body was found ten days later in Cuddy Creek, near the Monterey Trail bridge. Coroners ruled his death an accident, but it appears he had been alive for at least eight days after disappearing. Family felt he would be alive today if someone who had seen him had come forward about his whereabouts.

The Dobrovolny family is hopeful that they will find Dennis alive. They are working hard to piece together what happened after the Super Bowl party. Jeff Dobrovolny says at 2 a.m. on the morning of February 7 his father left the gathering at Three Points and Pine Canyon Road (at a place closed now, but formerly known as ‘The Bar’).

“He had watched the Super Bowl with Nelly, the owner, her husband George and his friends Angie and Dale,” Jeff said he was told, “then we believe he drove a half-mile home.”

Dobrovolny was in a gold, 1990s-era Chevy Cavalier fourdoor sedan. That car and all his other vehicles were at his residence when the owners of the property reported him missing after not seeing him for two weeks. They said the sedan had not been moved during those two weeks.

The family said they are offering the reward in the hope that someone will come forward with sufficient information to help them find him.

Anyone with information is asked to call 562-239-7683. Tips can be sent to the newspaper online at www.245NEWS.com and by calling 661-245-NEWS (6397) 24 hours a day. Leads can be phoned in (anonymously if you wish) to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigators at 323-890-5500 for Detective Steve Lankford or Detective Dave Gunner.

This is part of the March 11, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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