For the past 25 years, Collen Middleton’s fender Stratocaster Seymour Duncan S-4 has been his goto guitar.
“It was my first guitar,” he says. “My parents bought for my sister and I.”
Middleton received the guitar on a family trip to California when he was eleven years old. It was the instrument that kick-started his love of writing and performing music.
“That’s really what prompted me to start playing guitar was this guitar. So it has a lot of sentimental value to me, it’s not an expensive guitar to buy new, I’ve done upgrades to it over the years but really it’s the sentimental value”
On March 19, Middleton went out to his garage he noticed his prized strat was gone along with a bass, generator, a speaker and several amplifiers.
“I noticed that the lock to the attached garage had been broken, the door was left ajar. I went off to the side and saw cabinets and things moved and stuff gone,” said Middleton.
A home security camera captured a poor image of a suspect wearing a black jacket with a grey hoodie underneath and according to the Nanaimo RCMP, in addition to the guitar, several other notable items were stolen, including a yellow 4-string Yamaha guitar, green portable generator, Harmon- Kardon AVR2600 power amp and speaker, and two Behringer amplifiers.
“What happened is the bad guys pried open a deadbolt lock, went inside and there was just a multitude of musical equipment,” said Const. Gary O’Brien, media spokesperson with the Nanaimo RCMP.
After alerting Nanaimo RCMP and putting the call out on social media, Middleton has received plenty of messages but no leads on the whereabouts of the guitar.
“I’ve went down to the pawnshops to get my name out there, getting social media posts out there,” he says. “I mean I’m just kind of hoping to get the word out and that maybe somebody sees it and has the thought to give me a break”
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of this equipment is being asked to call the Nanaimo RCMP non-emergency line at 250-754-2345, and quote file # 2022-9303.
Cole Sorenson
