Stolen trumpets are found!

[BMH]

[See final post in this thread for the resolution to this problem; I am leaving the original up for a few hours so people who had been looking can know that these particular instruments are no longer missing. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!!!!]


Hi, TH world: last night all three of my concert trumpets were stolen out of the locked trunk of my Toyota Corolla in Jonesboro, Arkansas. (I'm the idiot who thought they would be safe there for just one night; apparently someone knew I owned trumpets....) Here are the specs:

Bach Strad B-flat model 37 serial no. 665-4XX
Bach Strad C 229 25H serial no. 673-2XX
Schilke P5-4 with Butler/Geyer conversion serial no. 470XX

All three are silverplate.

I am also missing a mouthpiece pouch containing two Scherzer mouthpieces and two lead pipes for my piccolo, plus a Torpedo Coyote triple case with wheels. Three mutes were included in the case (one Scherzer harmon, one Bach black mute, one DW cup mute).

If anyone has ANY information about possible leads on these, please email me: brittany.m.hendricks@gmail.com. I will be checking the account regularly.

Thanks so much for any help....I've also posted this information in the Marketplace just to be safe.

All the best,
-Brittany

[Don Herman rev2]

Wow, that sucks...

Hopefully you've already notified the police and your insurance company. You might make the rounds of the local pawn shops.

This is a painful reminder that I don't have all of my info safely recorded. It is a good idea to keep serial numbers and pictures of everything in a safe place in case the worst happens (theft, fire, flood, whatever). And my insurance limits coverage on musical instruments so a rider is in order.
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"After silence, that which best expresses the inexpressible, is music" - Aldous Huxley

[LittleRusty]

One can email the pictures and serial numbers to oneself. That way if you are out of town when your horns are stolen you can look them up easily.

[BMH]

Hi, all,

The trumpets are found!!!! They appear to be unharmed and are now very much under lock and key in my campus office. I am thankful that I have my serial numbers memorized and even more thankful that they didn't get very far. Thanks to everyone for reading and for your support!!

All the best,
-Brittany

[Dennis78]

Congratulations
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a few different ones

[John Mohan]

We're all very happy to hear the good news that they were found. But I'm sure everyone else is just as curious as I am as to the circumstances of how they were found, and so quickly. Pray tell!

Cheers,

John Mohan

[Betelgeuse215]

Yay. Congratulations!

[gregplo]

[roynj]

A very rare occurance to recover stolen horns so quickly (or ever). My friend had her many horns stolen from a travel trailer, but amazingly recovered them a few months later. Will miracles never cease!

Maybe the bad guys figure, "oh drat, here we go again with a bunch of useless trumpets that nobody wants." and they subsequently discard them.

To prevent trumpets from being stolen, stencil a graphic image of a saxophone on the outside of the cases. Just a thought.

Congrats on the recovery!!

[Robert P]

Very good news. It might be helpful to others to know exactly how they were recovered.
_________________
Getzen Eterna Severinsen
King Silver Flair
Besson 1000
Bundy
Chinese C

Getzen Eterna Bb/A piccolo
Chinese Rotary Bb/A piccolo

Chinese Flugel

[O00Joe]

Instruments inside of cars must be a thief magnet. I personally know quite a few people this has happened to.

One time at 4 AM, my buddy and I were sitting in his front room playing N64 right by where his car was parked. We heard the window smash and his newly completed custom Conn 8D French Horn was gone in under half a minute, thief nowhere to be seen. He never got the horn back either.

Glad to hear the good news though!
_________________
1981 Bb Bach Stradivarius 37/25 ML raw - Laskey 60C
2003 C Bach Stradivarius 239/25A L silver - Stork Vacchiano 4C25C
2006 Bb/A Schilke Piccolo P5-4 silver - Reeves A adaptor - Stork SM SP6
Akai MPC Live II
Roland JD-Xi
Casio MT-68

[plp]

I'm sort of the unofficial equipment manager for our band, and breaking down after gigs is always a bit hectic. The first thing I do is put my horns back in the cases, but don't always have the time to get them back into my truck before having to deal with everything else.

A few months ago one other well meaning band member picked them up and put them in the equipment trailer while I was breaking down the drum kit and had a few moments of panic, thinking they had been nicked. Fortunately he saw me digging around and told me what he had done.

It did put the fear in me, and now before anything else happens, they go back in the truck and get locked up.
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Since all other motives—fame, money, power, even honor—are thrown out the window the moment I pick up that instrument..... I play because I love doing it, even when the results are disappointing. In short, I do it to do it.” Wayne Booth

[BMH]

Hi, all,


I am terribly sorry to have been AWOL on this thread....as you’ll see, subsequent events were quite the distraction.

The short version of the story is that the guy who broke into our cars was on a bike and could not carry my wheeled Torpedo Coyote with him, so he left the horns behind and the people who recovered them returned them to us. The perp was picked up by the cops before he could come back to get them. This is not how it went down in real time, so here follows the long version:

Originally, we thought our next-door neighbor had stolen my instruments, because this is where they were found. (This is why I did not immediately post a more detailed update; I was too preoccupied thinking about the implications of living next door to someone who had been watching me closely enough to know that there might be anything valuable in the trunk of my otherwise messy car, and I was grateful enough to have them back to not want to implicate anyone specific.) When my husband, whose car window had been smashed, was sweeping up glass, the woman who rents that house asked if we were missing anything. He pointed out that I had had thousands of dollars of instruments stolen and she said she knew where they were. Apparently her nephew, staying with her, had brought my case into the house and when asked where he got it, said he “found it on the grass outside.� The neighbor lady was evidently as skeptical of this story as we were, but in any case she brought back my horns and I am now thinking how to best express my profound gratitude.

It is not a simple matter of walking up to the door and saying thanks; there is a reason we all thought the nephew had done it: namely, he had spent a lot of time over the past few days staring at me, at my friend who came over to the house, and at our residence in general. It was fairly creepy. It is still creepy. Turns out he is mentally disabled, which explains a lot. Also, I am reasonably confident that this guy at some point tried to play on my instruments, as evidenced by the fact that they had clearly been removed from the case and put back incorrectly. Just little things, and no damage, but not changes that could be accounted for by absentmindedness on my part. So I will probably send a very nice thank-you in the mail, AFTER we move next week....

Let the record show, however, that the nephew clearly ISN’T guilty. The next morning, I realized that my loop station was also missing, which I had overlooked in the shock of losing three pro horns. When I reported that theft to the cops, they called me back with news that the loop station had been found on the guy with the bike when he was arrested (though I doubt the guy on the bike tried to play on my instruments out in our parking lot!).

Long story short: I have now learned that just because you have a trunk that does not have windows, and just because you put instruments into that trunk ninety minutes away from home, and just because your trunk has never been broken into before, this does not mean that a random theif cannot choose to break into your vehicle on the one occasion in which you decide your horns are probably safe in the car overnight. NEVER AGAIN!! Not sure whether I am more thankful that my neighbor decided to volunteer information even though she suspected a relative or grateful that the original theif wasn’t equipped with a car. I give major credit to our local PD for the return of my loop station, though, and it does seem that they would have been well capable of finding my trumpets if they had been there to find.

Anyway, this probably doesn’t help anyone else who is missing horns, but it is a relief to know that mine did not get far. We also learned that, at least in our area, there is a law stipulating that pawn shops MUST report intake items to the police. Good to know! At any rate, thanks again to all of you for your help and concern. My deepest sympathy goes out to anyone else who has been in this situation; I haven’t felt so sick to my stomach in a long, long time....

Take care and thanks again,
-Brittany

P.S.- Not that this is related, but I am also selling my Courtois four-valve flugelhorn on eBay, if anyone is interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/123261349130