Maine
Maine musician gets stolen drums back in elaborate sting operation
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.
Many Maine municipalities will open cooling centers this week with the National Weather Service issuing a variety of heat advisories covering the next few days.
The Maine DEP also issued an air quality alert for Wednesday with ground-level ozone expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
All of York County, interior Cumberland and Androscoggin counties, and the southern half of Oxford County will fall under an extreme heat warning from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday.
The warning calls for “dangerously hot conditions” that could feature heat index values of up to 110 degrees, with overnight lows only expected to fall into the 70s, according to the weather service’s office in Gray.
The rest of the state — save northern Aroostook, Piscataquis and Somerset counties — falls under a heat advisory from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. However, the weather service has also placed much of the state under an extreme heat watch for Thursday.
Heat index values, which measure how hot it feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, are expected to reach up to 104 degrees during the heat advisory period, the weather service warns. They could reach 110 degrees Thursday, when the extreme heat watch is in effect.
Northern Oxford and Franklin counties, and central Somerset County, can expect a heat index value of up to 99 degrees Wednesday, according to the weather service.
The weather service advises people to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms when possible, avoid extended periods in the sun and check up on relatives and neighbors. It also warns not to leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles, as “car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”
Cooling Centers
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has also issued an air quality alert from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Wednesday along the coast from Kittery to Acadia National Park. The agency warns that ground-level ozone concentrations are expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Ozone levels may reach “moderate levels” further inland, according to the Maine DEP, including in all of Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, as well as parts of Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties.
Elevated ozone levels can pose a risk to children, older adults and people suffering from respiratory or heart diseases, according to the Maine DEP. Anyone exerting themselves outdoors may also experience health effects, which could include coughing, shortness of breath, throat irritation and mild chest pain.
Ozone levels were already climbing in southern New England on Tuesday, according to the Maine DEP, and winds are expected to bring those conditions to Maine on Wednesday.
The Maine DEP recommends that vulnerable populations avoid strenuous outdoor activities, keep windows closed, and circulate indoor air with fans or air conditioners. Those with asthma are also advised to keep quick-relief medication handy.
Particle pollution levels are also expected to be moderate across the state on Wednesday due to wildfire smoke, the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. Wildfires in Colorado, which have claimed the lives of three firefighters, had burned nearly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday, according to the Denver Post.
Maine could face up to $50 million in penalties next year due to errors in its payments for federal food benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture find that Maine’s error rate last year was nearly 11%, the bulk of which were overpayments. That’s in line with the U.S. average. But starting in October of next year, states with error rates above 6% must cover a portion of the SNAP benefits.
Anna Korsen, executive director of Full Plates, Full Potential, said the overpayments aren’t fraud — they’re human error. She said this new cost-shifting policy enacted last year under the Trump administration further complicates the SNAP application process.
“Instead, we could make this program more accessible and more efficient,” Korsen said. “And that would reduce the number of errors and also ensure that Mainers who are eligible for SNAP have access to it.”
She’s urging Congress to delay or reverse the policy under the farm bill that’s currently under consideration.
Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services said it’s taking steps to reduce the error rate, including modernizing its systems and hiring an additional 40 eligibility specialists.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
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