CUMBERLAND, Maine — When police asked Evan Casas if he was positive the drums for sale online were his beloved set, stolen from a storage unit last year, he didn’t hesitate.
“I told them I was 1,000 percent sure,” Casas said. They were like no other, and he’d know them anywhere.
The veteran percussionist had played the custom maple set at hundreds of gigs and recording sessions since a college friend made them for him 25 years ago, when they were both freshmen at the University of Southern Maine.
Casas’ positive identification led to a Hollywood-style police sting involving a wire, a secret code word and his old friend’s wife’s aunt. No one has yet been arrested, but Casas did get his drums back, which is all he really cares about.
The wild story started with a phone call in February from a security person making her rounds at the New Gloucester storage facility where Casas was storing the drums and other possessions while building a house. She told him the lock was missing from his unit, which was odd.
When he got to the unit, he immediately saw his drums were missing, along with several other items. It broke his heart.
Casas’ college friend and fellow drummer, Scott Ciprari, made the honey-colored set while both were music education students living in Robie-Andrews Hall on USM’s Gorham campus a quarter century ago. Ciprari went on to co-found the SJC Drum company which now counts drummers from Dropkick Murphys, Rancid and Sum 41 as clients.
“The third kit that he ever made was my kit,” Casas said. “They were very special to me — my first real drums.”
Casas filed a police report but doubted he’d ever see them again.
“I was devastated. I was emotionally attached to them,” Casas said. “I honestly grieved for them like I lost a family member.”
He got on with finishing his house, being a husband and raising his two daughters. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, SJC drum aficionados sprang into action.
Casas isn’t on social media, but his old pal Ciprari is, along with the 5,000-member SJC Drums Community Facebook group. There, members fanned out, scouring Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace and other online swaps, looking for anyone fencing the purloined drums. Eventually, in December — 10 months after they went missing — a member of Ciprari’s extended family located them.
“It was my wife’s aunt who found them,” Ciprari said, still somewhat surprised.
When Casas got the word, he used his wife’s social media account to look. Sure enough, there they were, offered for $1,500 on Facebook, just one town away from where they were stolen.
Resisting the urge to just buy them back and be done with it, Casas called the Cumberland County Sheriff’s detective assigned to his case. The detective assured him they’d get the drums back, then suggested an elaborate plan, if Casas was game.
He was and set up a meeting with the seller.
Reached for comment last week, the detective could only say the investigation was ongoing.
According to Casas, on New Year’s Eve morning, he met two deputies and a plainclothed detective behind the saltshed at a Maine DOT maintenance yard. The detective, a gun in his waistband and with a wireless microphone, got into Casas’ car. The deputies followed at a discreet distance as they headed for the house selling the drums.
“The plan was, once I could confirm that they were mine, I was to say, ‘These drums look legit,’” Casas said. “And then the detective would say, ‘Oh, they’re legit, huh, so you want to buy them?’ That was the code word for the deputies to roll up.”
When they got inside, Casas recognized the drums in an instant. His daughter’s pink baby blanket was still stuffed in the bass drum, where he’d put it to help deaden the sound. Casas then played his part, pretending to go out to his truck for the money while the deputies arrived.
Police later told Casas they didn’t arrest the woman selling the drums because she was conducting the transaction on behalf of a family member, according to Casas. Casas remembers the young woman looking stunned and very scared.
“I felt awful. I felt like a dad with daughters,” he said “I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s day. I just needed to get my drums back.”
To celebrate their return, Casas’ daughters asked if he could take their picture with the drums. He did.
The original maker of the drums is also happy for their homecoming.
“I hope those drums get passed down as a family heirloom,” Ciprari said. “He was one of the first guys who supported me. Those drums mean a lot.”
His house now completed, Casas said he’ll now be keeping the drums at home, where he can play them.
“They’re not going back into storage,” he said.
