GARDNER — The land is stark, rolling desert, unsuitable for crops, far from city lights and unlikely to tempt a profit-driven developer. To Gary Lensky, an Orthodox Jew who had spent years seeking spiritual enlightenment in India and Israel, the barren Colorado landscape with its panoramic mountain views suggested a life in touch with a higher power and being at peace with the world.
The land, he thought, would be the perfect home for a retreat where Orthodox Israelis could come to meditate.
During his 17 years on the property, Lensky’s dream of creating a haven for the religious has degenerated into a bitter land feud marked by tense, explosive confrontations and costly litigation.
Neighbors claim he has tried to steal their land, and Lensky accuses them of anti-Semitism.
In the course of the dispute, Lensky has employed at least four lawyers and spent almost $200,000 to win a 22-acre scrap of property that the county assessor valued at $13,450 in 2012.
Neighbors say they can scarce afford the legal bills they have racked up in the dispute, news of which has made its way into the pages of the Jeru salem Post.
Lensky, who said fear engendered by the actions of his neighbors keeps him trapped in his home, describes his life this way: “Basically, what I do for a living is defend my right to exist.”
Neighbors scoff at his claims, some suggesting that he is mentally unbalanced.
But those on both sides agree with resident Charles “Chuck” Choin who said: “It really has gotten ugly.”
Claiming the plot
In 1997, Lensky, known as “Baba,” drove into Huerfano County and met an old man who showed him a small home selling for $20,000. Lensky bought the property in the center of Gardner beside Colorado 69.
He quickly found that while the house was on the deeded land he purchased, other structures used by the former occupants were on adjacent property, a “no-man’s land” that hadn’t been on the tax rolls for decades, Huerfano County assessor Louise Sandoval said.
With Sandoval’s help, Lensky began poring over ancient property records to trace a chain of title.
“When we went to find out who the owner was, we found Agnes Quillian,” Sandoval said. Quillian, whose name was on a deed signed in 1908, had been dead for decades.
In 2000, Lensky paid back taxes to 1994 on 17 acres of the land, according to a court document. He planned to build a religious retreat called Camp D’ORvid at Casa D’el Arroyo, which would welcome his friends and followers.
The next year, he filed a quiet title action in district court, claiming ownership of the entire vacant 22 acres through Colorado’s “adverse possession” statute. The statute lets someone who uses another’s property for 18 years without an owner’s objection to take control of the land under certain circumstances.
Lensky’s friend Richie Pretto said he argued against adding the additional property to the original 17 acres. “It was stupid. He picked up 17 acres of land and then decided he wanted all the corners that other people had taken,” Pretto said.
Lensky didn’t give Choin and the other land owners direct notice that he was trying to seize the property. In October 2002, District Judge Claude Appel quieted title, in effect turning over the land to Lensky.
Choin and his wife, Judith, along with their neighbors Gery DiDomenico, Carol McDonald and William Trujillo and his son, hired a surveyor who prepared a map showing that the property Lensky claimed encroached on their property.
The surveyor concluded that other families, as well as Huerfano County and the state, also held an interest in the land Lensky claimed, Appel wrote.
The neighbors went back to district court, and in 2009, Appel vacated his original ruling, finding that Lensky had withheld important information when he didn’t tell the court that Quillian had been dead for decades in his quiet title action.
Appel then awarded Lensky’s neighbors, who were defendants in his suit, costs of $8,344 and attorney fees of $36,983. A three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Appel’s decision.
Professor Richard Collins, who teaches property law and other subjects at the University of Colorado Law School, reviewed both decisions for The Denver Post. They adhere to the law, he said.
Lensky has made mistakes in pursuing the property but still has a case for adverse possession, said his lawyer, Dennis Green.
“People … say, ‘We had some land around the edges, and you didn’t notify us,’ and that is true,” Green said. “I think the judge overreacted to what was an honest mistake on Gary’s part.”
Lensky admits no mistake and suggests Appel’s ruling is the result of anti-Semitism.
“There is no evidence or even common sense behind the rulings and findings of fact of Huerfano District Court,” Lensky wrote in an e-mail. “Only the most hateful presumptions were made.”
Physical disputes
In November 2008, Huerfano sheriff’s deputies, along with a member of the county road and bridge department and then-Commissioner Roger Cain, took down a post Lensky had erected above a survey marker placed by a surveyor he hired.
A video shows a deputy approaching Zachary Pedigo, who was shooting the video, and ordering him to the ground. Lensky can be heard demanding to know what deputies are doing and telling them they have no warrant to come on the land.
The deputy apparently brings Pedigo, 31, down and points a stun gun at him.
Another deputy tells Lensky that Sheriff Bruce Newman ordered them to remove the post, which he says is on a county road.
In a May 2010 video, an elderly woman scuffles with Rafael Caneti, an Israeli who was working with Lensky, over a no trespassing sign that Lensky had posted.
The woman, who falls to the ground in the video when Caneti, 48, pulls away from her as she grabs his beard, was charged with assault, which was later dismissed, Newman said.
In another incident, William Trujillo, owner of a liquor store near Lensky’s house, pushed Pedigo on the courthouse steps after a meeting with the county commission. Trujillo, who didn’t return calls seeking comment, was charged with harassment and received community service.
Changing attitudes
Attitudes toward Lensky and his followers were far different when they first began building, said his friend Jeffrey Ian Richman, also known as Yaakov Yitzok.
“We had tremendous community support at that time,” Richman, 59, who now lives in Australia, said in a telephone interview.
In the 1960s, Huerfano County became a refuge for members of the baby boom’s counterculture who lived in communes around the area.
“People who were veterans of this movement were willing to help us because they had that communal spirit,” Richman said.
Ex-hippies weren’t the only ones helping.
“I used to help them,” Choin said. “He used to get stuck in the sand, and I would go in and pull him out.”
It was an exciting time, Richman said. But as time passed, some of the town’s 550 residents grew hostile, Lensky said.
“I have heard people drive by the house and just scream out ‘(expletive) you Jews. Hitler should have finished the job,’ ” Richman said.
In motions for protection orders that Lensky filed in Huerfano County Court, he alleged hostile actions.
Among them:
• In 2003, someone torched a woodpile on his land, incinerating $1,500 of wood.
• In 2008, a patron of Trujillo’s liquor store stood outside Lensky’s home and let loose an expletive-laden, anti-Semitic rant that lasted for 30 minutes.
• In 2010, Trujillo pointed a rifle at Lensky as he walked with his dog.
Lensky said he reported the incidents but sheriff’s deputies did little to investigate.
Newman denied that he has refused to investigate complaints. In fact, he said, he has heard few from Lensky, outside of accusations that Choin and others remove sand from his land. The courts have said Lensky doesn’t own that land, Newman added.
He provided several reports requested by The Post. Lensky provided several others.
“We have been under siege,” said Lensky, who accuses county officials, including Appel, of joining with neighbors to mount a “pogrom,” a reference to violent attacks on Jews, sometimes encouraged by government, that took place in Russia and eastern Europe.
Randall Jorgensen, a Pueblo lawyer who has helped Lensky with some legal work, said the sheriff refuses to remain neutral.
“It seems when (Lensky) calls with respect to trespassing on the property, he gets no coverage,” Jorgensen said. “But when someone else calls, the sheriff comes right away and takes an aggressive posture on the side of the other parties.”
Possible mediation
Neighbors admit they have knocked down fence posts that Lensky set, removed surveying stakes and material that he left in the open. But they say they were on their land.
Choin got a surprise when Lensky started sending him bills for parking his heavy equipment within yards of his shop.
“He wanted $9,025 for back rent,” said Choin, who refused to pay. The case was dismissed in small claims court. “He didn’t own the property.”
DiDomenico, 54, said he has never hurled an ethnic slur at Lensky, or his followers, but wouldn’t be surprised if others had — “There’s people that are like that.”
Choin admits he once told Lensky: “No wonder everyone hates the Jews.” Today, Choin said, he regrets the comment.
“They been hanging that around my neck ever since. If he had stayed on the other side of the road, I would have never cared,” Choin said. “But once he got on my side, I was upset about it.”
Green acknowledges that his client didn’t do himself any favors by sending bills to Choin.
“I would say pick up the phone and go to the guy’s fence line” and talk to him, Green said. “I think that is a mistake of judgment, but there is nothing dishonest or illegal about it.”
While Lensky’s opponents in the dispute see a scoundrel, those who worked with him on the property say he is a righteous spiritual leader as versed in religions of the East as he is in the tenets of Judaism.
Lensky describes himself as an “ordained” Hindu swami, who has renounced the world and embraced a monastic life.
Lensky is a baal teshuva, a Jew who has returned to his religious roots, and a holy man, Richman said.
“This is a guy who thinks about God all the time. He doesn’t know from evil; he just loves God,” Richman said. “He is in the service of God, that is why he went out there and built a retreat.”
The two sides have agreed to mediate a remaining lawsuit that could result in structures that Lensky built — including an extension he added to the small home he purchased — being bulldozed.
But there are no guarantees the nonbinding mediation, scheduled for March 20, will lead to a settlement.
Pretto, who is also Jewish, said the dispute is more native vs. outsider than gentile vs. Jew.
“He was stupid by being greedy. They got together and harassed him,” he said.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dpmcghee
