Bay Area music shop owner solves crime of stolen guitar: Here's how

ANTIOCH, Calif. (KGO) -- A Bay Area man whose guitars were stolen from a storage unit while he was moving was stunned to find some of the instruments being resold online just weeks after the burglary.

Luis Monteiro said multiple instruments were being temporarily stored in an Antioch storage unit when the it was broken into and the items disappeared.

"I've been playing the violin since I was five and the guitar since I was 15. I bought that guitar when I was 16," Monteiro said.

After discovering the theft, Monteiro filed a report with the Antioch Police Department and began investigating on his own.

A simple online search led him to listings for some of the missing instruments and eventually to a Craigslist post that caught his attention.

"I found this Craigslist ad that says, 'hey, if you had this guitar so-and-so stolen and, recently, respond to this ad and I did," Monteiro said.

The post had been created by Allan Harrell, owner of Guitar Finds.

Most days, Harrell buys, repairs and sells instruments.

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Occasionally, he finds himself trying to solve crimes.

He said it's pretty obvious when someone is selling a guitar that is not theirs.

"They'll say, 'Oh, I got it at a storage unit,' or 'I won it a storage unit auction' or 'I got it from my grandma, grandpa, uncle' or something like that. And it starts to put up little red flags," Harrell said.

Believing something was unusual about the guitar, Harrell posted information online in case the rightful owner was searching for it.

Monteiro said finding the post was a breakthrough.

"That was fantastic, actually. It really blew me away that someone would do something like that," he said.

Harrell is now holding the guitar for Monteiro until it can be returned.

He said efforts to recover stolen instruments should not depend solely on music store owners, even though it's something he's now done a countless amount of times.

"In the afternoon, he was inside of this shop. And then by the evening time, he was inside of a police car," Harrell said of a man trying to sell a different stolen guitar.

Asked why he works to reunite stolen guitars with their owners, Harrell offered a simple explanation: "Because it's the right thing to do."

When contacted about the case, Antioch police told us they would look into it.