Caviar Dealer, 84, Still in Coma After Brutal Attack

At restaurants and hotels around town, he is known as Mr. Zee, the man who sold them caviar. On the Hollywood block where he worked, he was a familiar figure, a tiny man, always in a suit and tie and hat, and always smiling.

To his employees at Caviar & Fine Foods Inc., he has been the kindly boss who can’t seem to retire, even though he is 84, because “this was his life,” as Bob Dickerson, the firm’s operations manager, put it.

On Monday, Wladimir Zarotschenzeff, which is Mr. Zee’s real name, remained in a coma at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He has been there since he was robbed and beaten behind his Melrose Avenue business April 13.

His company announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his attackers, sales manager Betsy Uehlein said, “hoping that someone will come forward.”

Police have no witnesses, according to Hollywood Division Detective Butch Harris, who said that is surprising. The attack occurred shortly after 3 p.m., he noted, and the caviar shop adjoins two restaurants, Emilio’s and Il Piccolino, at the corner of Melrose and Highland Avenue. “There’s lots of people in and out of there all the time. It’s almost impossible nobody saw anything.”

Mr. Zee, a Russian emigre who started his business importing and distributing caviar out of a refrigerator in his home 35 years ago, was getting out of his old white Oldsmobile, with “Z CAVIAR” license plates, to enter his firm from the alley side.

He was hit from behind, repeatedly punched in the face and left in a pool of blood on the ground next to a lemon tree.

The employees didn’t know what had happened for several minutes, Dickerson said. “Somebody said, ‘Mr. Zee’s car is here,’ and I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ ” Then they went looking.

It is ironic that he would be robbed, Dickerson said, because the old man never carried more than a few dollars. But he had also been robbed at gunpoint in the same spot about a year earlier, he added.

Zarotschenzeff is known as “the man who established caviar on the West Coast,” said Alois Kerschrieter, chef at the Bistro Garden in Beverly Hills.

“Before him, there were a lot of companies in New York, but not here,” Uehlein said, adding that Mr. Zee built up a large clientele among restaurants, hotels, cruise ships and airlines.

Zarotschenzeff’s only interest was the business, she added, sitting in front of a wall of pictures of movie stars who have patronized the caviar shop. “He ate two ounces of caviar every day. Sevruga caviar. He said it was his secret of longevity.”

“You know the Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot?” said Pauline Baglioni, co-owner of Emilio’s and Il Piccolino. “He was like that, impeccably dressed, with impeccable manners.”

Zarotschenzeff, the father of two grown children who work as teachers, lives in North Hollywood with his wife, his staffers said. She suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and has not been told about the attack.