A Boston woman has finally been reunited with the flute she lost nine years ago.
Heidi Slyker told the New York Times she left the Brannen Brothers flute -- valued at $10,000 -- she had performed with since she was a little girl inside a taxi cab on the night of her first rehearsal with the New England Philharmonic after a chair had recently opened in 2012.
"I immediately knew," Slyker said of the car pulling away with her instrument in the back seat at the time.
Slyker said she called the cab company but employees said they couldn't locate the driver and hadn't received reports of any lost musical instruments. She eventually filed a police report and was featured in a CBS Boston feature -- then known as Heidi Bean -- at the time of her flute's disappearance.
Slyker said a friend lent her a flute to use during her performance, but she said it was noticeably worse than her cherished flute.
“They were like ‘Flute 2 sounds terrible.’ And I was like, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was able to finish the concert, but I never got asked back.”
“It was terrible,” Slyker added. “I finally got into an orchestra and I just had to quit.”
Slyker continued to perform her gigs rotating instruments at the Howl at the Moon music club, now working as a musical director, as well as continuing as a performer, but was unable to purchase another flute for years due to owing $75,000 in student loans.
“It took me like five years before I got another flute,” Slyker said.
Slyker finally received some surprising news last month when a Brannen Brothers representative contacted her after a man had recently walked into a local music store and asked to have a silver flute appraised, which matched the serial number on the flute Slyker lost nine years prior.
"I almost passed out," she said.
Brett Walberg, the employee at Virtuosity Musical Instruments, said he was suspicious of the man asking for an appraisal who didn't appear to be a flutist.
“It was kind of like watching someone who’s never picked up a football before, versus, like, Eli Manning picking up a football,” Mr. Walberg told the New York Times.
Walberg -- who also teaches music history at Lasell University -- said the flute was rare and wouldn't have been used by a casual hobbyist, which he deemed "kind of a yellow flag."
Walberg said he couldn't keep the flute because it hadn't immediately been determined as stolen, so it was at the store for less than two hours and returned to the man who brought it in.
Walberg contacted Brannen Brothers and gave the information he had, leading the flutemarker to tracking down the original bill of the sale and discovering it had Slyker's name.
Walberg, who happens to be friend's with Slyker's brother, was unable to get the man to return the flute, but Boston Police eventually intervened.
Detectives made contact with the man who said he'd purchased it from an unknown individual and eventually turned it over to police, who returned it to Slyker on Monday (April 19.)
“It was then determined that the individual was a taxi cabdriver who was driving a cab the day that the flute was reported missing,” the department said in a news release obtained by the New York Times.
The department said the man may face charges, but Slyker said she's unsure if she wants him to be prosecuted.
“I’m not a vengeful person, but he really did mess with me,” she said. “It was just so personal, and it affected me in so many ways.”
Photo: Getty Images