Well, as some of you might have heard, about two weeks ago (Wednesday, 30 August 2006) Kristen & I had our instruments stolen out of our parked car, near Symphony Hall in Boston. There’s a file with serial numbers and more detailed description here. It was her very special Engelbert Schmid Full Double French Horn and my Yamaha “Artist-Model” Xeno C Trumpet and Bach Stradivarius B-flat Trumpet. The latter I’ll be happy to replace with a better instrument, but I mourn the passing of a very good C trumpet.

Being stolen always has an element of “it sucks” to it, but Kristen & I have been working at keeping out of the downward spiral of negativity that can surround such an event. We’ve both been well supported by the musicians around us who all empathize greatly with our loss and have been generous in offering spare instruments for use in the meantime. We’ve both done well in auditions on these new/old instruments and are looking forward to having some money coming in from insurance to cover the costs of purchasing new ones.

Anyway, there are some lessons that we have learned from all of this that we wanted to share with the world at large:

1) Locked car doors don’t mean THAT much.
I made the mistake of leaving my valuable trumpets on the back seat of the car. A thief who knows what that is near Symphony Hall took maybe 5 minutes to pry the door open from above, slide a wire down and pull the door lock up, and take the instruments. If you’ve ever called AAA because you’ve locked your keys in your car, you know that opening the door locks is certainly not a firm barrier. See here and here and here for photos of how little effort it took to get in. In our case, what was stolen out of the car was worth far more than the car itself (~$17,000 vs. ~$3000). It’s much better to keep valuables in the truck, out-of-sight, so a thief isn’t even tempted.

2) Your car comes with a trunk-lock, use it!
This leads me to our next lesson. Kristen’s horn was safely out-of-sight in the trunk, but the thief, after gaining easy entry by the window, used the handy in-cab trunk release to pop the trunk and doubled his take for the day. I think most cars come equipped with a lockable truck such that ONLY a key can open it, and this is a valuable feature. You need a crowbar and a lot of determination to break into a locked trunk. If you have valuables and you’re parking in the city, leave it in the trunk-locked trunk or don’t leave it in the car. Otherwise you’re taking your chances.

3) Insurance is helpful. Instrument insurance, at some point, is a must.
As musicians, we all are advised by our schools and teachers to insure our instruments under a separate policy from our parent’s homeowner’s insurance. This is wise! Kristen had it and I did not. I’m wrestling with Homeowners to get some coverage for my loss and Kristen’s pretty well off. So to my musician-friends out there, take the time to think about what would happen if your horns were stolen. Prior to this, I owned about $13,000 worth of instruments and accessories. Thankfully I only lost $6,000-$7,000 of it, but I’ll have even more wrapped up in them when I’m done. At a certain point, the risks incurred by carrying this much value around with you every day, everywhere you go, makes it decidedly worth the cost of buying protection. When a police officer asked us “you left $17,000 worth of equipment just sitting in the car??” Kristen’s first response was that these things are like cell phones to us — we use them every day and just aren’t aware of the value of them in monetary terms. Anyway, moral is, take a moment to reflect on the things you carry around with you, and think about whether it’s worth it to have specific insurance protection for these things.

Sorry to start of the blog with such a gloomy post, and have no fear that this has quenched either of our spirits or faith in humanity. It’s just brusquely expanded our awareness to the possibilities of things that “would never happen to us” and taught us some valuable lessons. We’ve yet to see the end of the saga and who knows what good will come of this?