CHICAGO (AP) – Anyone who has left a hat on a Chicago Transit Authority train knows that everything that leaves the station without its owner often disappears forever.
Except, apparently, for a $ 22,000 gold and silver flute.
Donald Rabin holds back – and sings – the flute left by his grandmother, whom he forgot on a train chair when he went out last week in Logan Square.
“I’m just grateful that I have the flute in my hand, that I can make music again and make people smile,” said Rabin, a 23-year-old flutist from Boston.
Rabin was on a Blue Line train from O’Hare International Airport during a stopover before returning to Berklee College of Music in Boston. When he came down, he realized that he had left his flute behind.
He said he traveled by train for hours hoping to find the flute. When he came empty-handed, he reported the missing instrument to the police and took it on social media to tell people what had happened.
According to the Chicago Tribune, a CNN reporter told Rabin, as he was about to fly from Chicago, that there was a comment on Facebook about the flute that appears in a pawn shop, that a homeless man had found it and used it as collateral for a $ 550 loan.
The pawnshop owner, Gabe Cocanate, was holding on to the flute, trying to determine if it was as valuable as it looked, when he and his wife saw the story of the missing flute on the news.
So when the homeless man returned to the store, “I’m going,” “Listen man, the news has spread.” It’s not your flute, “Coconate told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Police picked up the flute and contacted Rabin, who flew back to Chicago this week, retrieved it and treated officers at a brief concert.
Rabbi knew the chances of ever seeing something so valuable. And yet, he said, “For some reason, I knew in my heart and soul that it would be found. I knew my grandmother would never leave me. ”