<p>rudysmom, Glad there is a happy ending to this story, a good reminder for us all!</p>
<p>Yes, that was the first thing my husband & I said - - this will hopefully be a lesson he will never forget. And the funny thing is, had we told him from the beginning, he would never have listened to us. He had to learn the hard way.</p>
<p>Locks at Crane are now supplied by the school, they are heavy master combination locks.</p>
<p>There are locking cello cases, specifically the big traveling, silver, sarcophagus shaped case (cannot remember the brand name). S left a very good bow in a practice room at school, it was turned in to security, and he retrieved it after a very anxious few hours. He and we were very very lucky! </p>
<p>His luthier told us about “finding” a previously stolen violin which a stranger brought to him for evaluation. He knew the instrument, recognized it, had a hard time convincing police to investigate. I would suggest that you put in an alert with the luthier/bow folks (there is an association) to be on the lookout for the bow…it will be have to be rehaired eventually, whoever has it.</p>
<p>Just saw your good news! Praises be! I can vouch for how well the lesson will have been learned…he will be very careful.</p>
<p>Yes, lorelei! ;)</p>
<p>Glad it turned up. Hopefully he learned his lesson. You cannot be too trusting.</p>
<p>I am grateful it “has been found.” What would bother me would be that there is someone, probably a cellist in the program with whom he studies daily that probably did this.</p>
<p>It could be another cellist, but it could also be another non-music student at the school. It could be a visitor, or staff, or a person “off the streets”, depending on how the building is accessed.</p>
<p>It’s really difficult to tell. The theft could have been planned, or it was a grab of opportunity.</p>
<p>The important things to be gleaned from this is to be security conscious, never get too trusting of surroundings. And be careful with whom you discuss instrument and bow costs. Keep it within your circle that you really can trust implicitly, and even then word of a high dollar item tends to spread. </p>
<p>It’s been my experience that music students tend to be very respectful and conscious of each other’s belongings.</p>
<p>And there are selfish people everywhere.</p>
<p>The first thing he said was no musician would do something like this. He spent quite a bit of time trying to explain the respect one musician has for the next (as if I didn’t know). </p>
<p>I do think his just happened to be handy at the time. </p>
<p>And yes, the important thing is to always be conscience of your surroundings and never too trusting. </p>
<p>I personally think it was probably headed to a pawn shop.</p>
<p>A few years ago, a violin professor at Rice had loaned one of his students one of his Strads because she was working on a major concerto competition. Stolen from the practice room. The student was utterly traumatized, and the professor was just in shock. Thiefs know that instruments are expensive, and it’s easy to blend in on a college campus. Nobody bats an eyelash at someone moving a harp or cello into or out of the music building… Just drive right up, load it in the back, and take off. It was a big wakeup call for everyone. DH now has insurance riders on both his tenor and bass trombones through our renter’s insurance at State Farm.</p>
<p>When I was at Rice, I tuned pianos for the Shepherd School and had a theft incident of my own… My small kit of rubber mutes, several strip mutes, a couple of nice tuning forks, and my rosewood tuning lever were on the table behind me in the library, and when I turned back around from working on my problem set, they were gone. While I was in the middle of filing a police report, another officer reported that a non-student on the opposite side of campus had turned it in to her, saying that he had “found” it… The guy probably had no idea that it was worth several hundred dollars. I can imagine that he was probably baffled when he opened my bizarre little toolkit.</p>
<p>Best bet is to keep your instrument with you and chained to your ankle at all times, and to leave a half-starved badger locked in the locker at the music school as a little surprise for would-be thieves…</p>