Donald Rabin carefully placed his 18-carat silver and gold flute beside him on a Chicago subway train.
“Don’t forget, Donald, don’t forget,” he recalls thinking while struggling with other belongings, including a suitcase and a laptop, on January 29. He had just spent two weeks in St. Louis with his family and stopped in Chicago to visit a friend over the weekend before flying home to Somerville, Massachusetts.
When the blue line train stopped at the Logan Square stop, Rabin, 23, a graduate student at the Boston Conservatory in Berklee, gathered his things, ran out of the car, and went up the stairs to get a ride.
Suddenly, panic came over him.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God”, he remembers thinking. “I don’t have my flute.”
For the next four hours, Rabin hopped from train to train, still carrying his luggage, while searching in vain for the instrument, which he said he bought for $ 22,000. He spent the weekend calling each stop on the blue line and the Chicago police.
Then he started calling news agencies across the city, hoping that advertising would help. He posted a request for help on Facebook, describing the sentimental value of the flute, which he said he bought in 2016 with the money he inherited after his grandmother died of breast cancer.
He refused to lose hope.
“There must be some good soul out there who gave it away,” Rabin remembers thinking. “I will put all my faith in this person.”
It turns out that someone had found the flute, but Mr. Rabin would need more than faith to get it back.
On January 30, Gabe Coconate, 42, the owner of West Town Jewelry and Loan, said he was preparing to close his store when two men and a woman approached and offered to sell him a silver and gold flute.
According to Coconate, one of the men, who identified himself as Lukas Mcentee, 33, said he wanted $ 7,500 for the instrument and began to tell the story of how the flute belonged to his father, who died.
Mr. Coconate, who has been in the pawnshop business for 20 years, was skeptical.
“I hear stories of my mom and dad dying all the time,” he said in an interview on Saturday.
But Coconate agreed to lend the man $ 500 and keep the flute for the weekend, so that he could do research on the instrument and discover its value. He took the man’s identity card and inserted his name and date of birth, along with a photo of the flute, on LeadsOnline, a website that helps track stolen goods.
The following night, Mr. Coconate was watching the news with his wife when Mr. Rabin’s story appeared on the screen.
Coconate said his wife asked if it was the same flute he had in his pawnshop.
“Yes, it is,” he replied, then called the Chicago Police Department.
On February 1, Mr. Mcentee, his girlfriend and friend returned to the store and asked Mr. Coconate to buy the flute or return it, saying he had offers from other stores willing to give him $ 10,000.
Following the advice of the police, Mr. Coconate lied to him and said that he had sent the flute to be evaluated to see if it was real gold.
Mr. Mcentee came back the next day, pulled out a wad of money and said he wanted the flute back.
“I said, ‘Lukas, this is all over the news,'” recalled Coconate on Saturday. “’You are not in trouble. You didn’t steal it, but it’s not your flute. ‘”
“Locators, keepers,” replied Mr. Mcentee, according to Mr. Coconate, who refused to take the money or return the flute.
That’s when Mcentee got excited, said Coconate.
Mr. Coconate then called the Chicago police, who explained to Mr. Mcentee over the phone that the flute was under investigation and that he needed to leave the pawnshop.
The Chicago Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Mcentee declined to be interviewed.
Rabin, who flew back to Boston that day, later received text messages from Mcentee apologizing for trying to pawn the flute. He said he would return the instrument, but first Rabin would have to transfer $ 550 to him in order to repay the loan he had obtained from Coconate.
Mr. Rabin called the police, who told him not to wire anything. On Wednesday, the police told him that he had recovered the flute.
He flew back to Chicago, where the officers returned the flute. As a thank you, Mr. Rabin played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for 20 police officers at the police station. It was the first time he played for an audience live and personally since March.
Mr. Rabin said he was so happy that he wanted to cry.
“I was in a totally different world,” he said.
He said he felt terrible because Coconate was out of $ 500 and asked people on Facebook to help him raise money for the pawnshop owner.
Rabin said he was not angry with Mcentee, who raised more than $ 13,000 on a GoFundMe page that says he and his girlfriend “have been homeless for years”. Mr. Rabin donated $ 25 to Mr. Mcentee and sent an additional $ 67 through an instant payment application.
“I really understand what it is like to have no money,” said Rabin, who took out loans to pay for the school and had to borrow money from friends to pay the rent. “We are just humans on this planet. Everyone is bound to make mistakes that way. “
He and Mr. Coconate talked on Thursday about what happened. Coconate said Rabin expressed hope that Mcentee could repay him the $ 500 of the money he raised for himself.
Coconate said he was not optimistic.