‘Super thankful’: Stolen Legacy guitar returned to Case’s Music

Behind the smoke and destruction on Queen Street East today, one nearby business in the downtown core has some positive news to report.

The owners at Case’s Music are happy to share that the special lap steel guitar stolen from their store last month has been recovered and is in excellent condition.

Part of Jerry Legacy’s impressive 300-piece collection, the guitar was among a variety of unique and eclectic instruments that was given to the music school on consignment by the collector’s family, as SooToday previously reported.

A well-known musician who passed away last year, Legacy hand-crafted and assembled the guitar himself back in 1997 and documented the process as seen in the photos published in the above gallery.

VIDEO: This story about guitars might make you gently weep

Security footage from Apr. 27 captured the moment a man grabbed the lap steel and slipped the item into his bag before exiting the store.

Jake Rendell, the new owner at Case’s Music, felt that might be the last time they would ever see the distinctive two-foot-long instrument — until yesterday.

“Usually if it’s been gone for more than a day, that’s it — you’re never going to see it again,” he said. “We’re super thankful. Every time something bad happens, this community rallies so much in such a positive way. It’s unbelievable.”

While he wasn’t able to disclose how the guitar made its way back to the Queen Street music school, Rendell said the prized item was returned to them on Tuesday afternoon with zero damages.

It even remained in tune.

“We did a quality check, and everything works great,” he said. “Outside of sanitizing it for safety, we just made sure everything was functional. I don’t even know if he opened the case.”

Shortly after the Saturday theft, Rendell took to social media last week to alert their followers of what had happened in hopes of retrieving the lap steel.

He said without the support of the community, they never would have gotten the Legacy instrument back.

“We had a lot of people reach out to us, talking about how disappointing it was,” he said. “We got it back 100 per cent because of the community involvement and the rallying around that post. “Everybody came together all at once, and it was really heartwarming and awesome.”

Rendell told SooToday they will not be pressing charges against the man responsible for stealing the guitar, but he did note that the culprit will not be welcome back inside the store.

“That’s pretty much as far as our justice is going to go,” Rendell said. “We know that people do things in desperate times, and this person was clearly in some desperate times. I’m not going to make excuses for him, but we also don’t need to push it any farther.”

“We’re just happy it’s home, it’s such a cool piece of Jerry’s history” he added. “We feel very loved and very proud — that’s what we want to focus on.”