All is calm in the suburban neighborhood. A gentle breeze blows, causing the multi-colored trees to rustle. A swing hangs in the lawn of the house on Farmgate Way.

Parked in front is a shiny silver Suburban with its trunk ajar, revealing a $30,000 upright double bass lying on its side. Inside the home, children plead for attention, while a phone rings and its inhabitants are occupied by the demands of life.

Three strangers creep along the street, unnoticed. No one is there to see a young woman, flanked by two men, hurriedly walking away with the massive six-foot-long stringed instrument.

Dan Ahlstrom, fine arts chair, has taught music at SCDS for 10 years. A month ago he received the greatest setback of his musical career.

“When I found out my bass was stolen, it felt like one of my family members had been kidnapped. I’ve had it longer than I’ve been married,” Ahlstrom said.

“He was sad all the time [the bass was gone],” Ahlstrom’s son, sixth-grader Alex said. “He kept searching eBay to see if someone had listed it on there. It was the first time my dad ever got really emotional or came close to crying.”

Nine days after the bass went missing, it miraculously showed up again at Skip’s Music (2740 Auburn Blvd).

Three people had tried to sell the bass at Skip’s, claiming it belonged to one of their mothers. Floor manager Tim Shirk described the trio as a woman in her early 20’s and two men.

“After about three to four questions, I could tell that the bass was stolen. The stories just didn’t line up,” Shirk explained. The woman said her mother had bought the bass new and neither of them had ever played it.

Doubting her honesty, Shirk examined the bass, discovering it to be several centuries old and an instrument regularly played.

In the summer of 1989 (his first year in college), Ahlstrom decided he needed a new instrument. So he took a road trip to an instrument shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a fellow bass player.

“The way they tell you to find an instrument is they give you a bunch of them and you find one that speaks to you. I know this sounds corny, but that’s how it went,” Ahlstrom said.

Crafted in the mid-18th century, the bass was French-made and of German wood. A dark, reddish-brown color, it was covered in cracks and had been mended multiple times by instrument repairman Jeff Saws, who also played a major role in reuniting Ahlstrom with his instrument.

“Tim at Skip’s calls me,” Saws said. He sees a lot of people trying to sell stuff to Skip's and this case looked odd. "He asks me if I’ve heard of a certain ‘Louis Lutz’ [brand] Bass. I told him yes, that there’d been one stolen just last week. I described it to him and he said that was the one, so I gave him Dan [Ahlstrom]’s phone number.”

The bass had been appraised at around $25,000 with a bow in the $5,000 range. Shirk said he immediately recognized the bass to be one of high quality, but the threesome trying to sell it to him were completely ignorant of its value. He convinced them it was of low quality and bought it for $200.

Ahlstrom offered to pay Shirk the money he lost in retrieving his bass, but Shirk refused.

Saws recalled Ahlstrom’s reaction upon discovering that his bass had been found.

“[I called him and] Dan said he’s gonna kiss Tim Shirk when he sees him, he was so happy,” he said, laughing.

When he arrived at Skip’s, Ahlstrom gave Shirk a “big warm hug.” He had not slept much during the week and a half that his bass had been missing.

“It’s connected to my youth. I was worried about it the way you would be worried if your grandmother with Alzheimer’s got kidnapped,” he explained.

Ahlstrom said he was more worried about what would become of his bass than the fact that it had been taken from him. The thought that a fine instrument like that might not be played tortured him.

“You don’t own an instrument like that. A great musician before me played it and hopefully, if I care for it, it will outlive me and I will pass it on to the next generation to play it.

“I was so afraid that its legacy would die out after me just because I wasn’t careful enough,” Ahlstrom said.

“I kept thinking that if I thought about it hard enough I would be able to communicate with it telepathically.”

When he first got his bass back, Ahlstrom left it at home, choosing to perform at a gig with one of the school’s instruments.

“I don’t really want to take it out and play it anymore because I’m now paranoid that something will happen to it,” Ahlstrom said.

“But I can’t not play it. [Performing is] what it was made for.”