Analy band hopes to recover instruments presumed stolen at Giants game

For two decades, the Analy High School band has headed to San Francisco to play 'The Star- Spangled Banner' at the beginning of a Giants game and come back full of happy memories.

This year, those memories were clouded by the loss of 14 musical instruments worth around $8,000, some of them beloved family belongings.

The instruments, mostly flutes and clarinets, are presumed stolen. They went missing the evening of Aug. 25 on the band's 20th annual trip to perform at the Giants game.

Camryn Dierke, 14, is still searching eBay and Craigslist for signs of her missing flute, which was her mother's first and has been in the family about 35 years.

'I loved it' she said, adding that she was heartbroken when she found out it had been stolen. 'It's not just a flute; it's something that came from my mom.'

Band program coordinator Dawn Johnson also used the word heartbroken when describing her reaction to what happened. The day started out well, with a great performance by the band, she said.

'(The band) sounded really nice,' she said. 'It was surreal to be on the field. It's one of our more popular trips. Now it's tainted.'

After performing, the musicians headed to the buses in one of the Giants parking lots to stash their instruments before returning to the stadium to watch the game.

The small woodwind instruments — flutes, piccolos and clarinets — were stored in two large plastic containers meant to protect them on the long ride, Johnson said.

But as roughly 100 band members busily got ready for the game, one container was left outside, at the back of the bus, where nobody remembered to load it before heading back to the stadium.

Band and orchestra director Kelly Stewart said frankly, 'It slipped. It's no one's fault, but it's a terrible lesson we learned.'

Nobody noticed the container was missing until they returned to Sebastopol after the game, around midnight. But the band leaders believe the instruments were stolen long before the buses departed. The bus driver checked the parking area for any stray items before leaving, as did a chaperone. They saw nothing.

'It was that sinking feeling, utter disbelief,' Stewart said. 'We felt, 'they've gotta be somewhere.' '

Thinking and hoping the container could still be sitting in the parking lot, Stewart and Johnson drove back to San Francisco that night to check. They looked everywhere, talking to parking enforcement officers at the lot and nearby homeless people.

They were gone until 4:30 a.m. but found no sign of the instruments.

At first, Johnson and Stewart hoped a Good Samaritan or security guard had picked up the instruments and would soon turn them in. They reached out to the Giants, who in turn asked vendors if they'd seen anything — without success. They checked with the company that manages the parking lot but found there was no video surveillance. They searched pawn shops and checked Craigslist and now are gathering the instruments' serial numbers from the various families so they can finish filing a police report. But as time has passed, they've shifted their focus from trying to find the instruments to figuring out how to replace them.

The school had just enough instruments on hand to replace those that have gone missing, but they're left without a flute to spare, Johnson said. Four of the missing instruments belonged to the school's music department, the others belonged to students like Dierke, 15-year-old Kassidy Sharp, who had received her unusual blue flute last year as an early Christmas present, and 14-year-old Rosie Soden, who had owned her own clarinet for the past five years and grown accustomed to playing it.

The school wants to replace or pay for each student's personal instrument that was lost, Stewart said. They are hoping for donations of instruments as well as money.

On Thursday, following a Wednesday newscast about the theft on ABC 7, community members donated three clarinets and two flutes, Stewart said.

'We're really happy about people being ready to come in and help us out,' she said.

Anyone wishing to help out can make a donation at http://analybandwagon.org/howhelp.shtml

Staff Writer Jamie Hansen blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach her at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com.