Volunteer searchers scour area for missing woman

Chisago County Sheriff’s Department facilitated field searches over the past week, looking for a woman believed missing from a Chisago Lake Township homesite. The effort has taken to the air in the last few days, and Sheriff Rick Duncan said with snow melting it’s hoped clues or evidence might become visible. The effort will also include an underwater remote control unit to search area lakes. The missing woman, Danielle Jelinek, lives in Oakdale, but family members thought she may have been in Chisago Lake Township last weekend. When authorities arrived at a home on 261st, they discovered some of her personal effects but the homeowner was uncooperative. He was jailed and held briefly in Center City on drug possession. He is now jailed on alleged probation violations through an Anoka County warrant. Sheriff Duncan said the drug charges are still being pursued here. Many hundreds of volunteers answered the calls for search parties announced by e mail and fax through the sheriff’s office. Searchers first assembled Thursday, Dec. 13 at Chisago City Community Center, where they were divided into groups supervised by deputies. They walked residential yards and farm fields south of Chisago City, poked and prodded rows of hay bales, looked into culverts and turned up nothing. Search parties were supervised by sheriff personnel last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The areas were general in scope and arranged in quadrants around the home on 261st where authorities located Jelinek’s cell phone, etc. More specific locations are being targeted now, and general mass searching is suspended for now, according to Sheriff Rick Duncan.