Heidi Slyker knew the moment she stepped out of the taxicab on Jan. 8, 2012, that she had left her flute—a Brannen she spent years saving up for—behind.
Slyker was reunited with her long-lost flute on Monday after a taxicab driver attempted to determine the flute’s value in February and a music store employee noticed that flute matched the description of the one Slyker had lost all those years ago. Boston police were able to collect the flute from the man and return it to Slyker, albeit in rougher shape.
Police intend to seek a complaint against the cab driver in Boston Municipal Court, who was working the night the flute went missing, for receiving stolen property.
After nine years of waiting and periodically checking eBay to see if her prized flute would surface, Slyker said she’d all but given up hope.
“I would stay in touch with the pawn shops and I would always check, but after a year I figured, I mean at this point I was just telling my husband like I had [a] zero percent chance that I would ever see it again,” she said. “It was really surprising.”
Slyker discovered the flute had been found after receiving a call from the flute maker, which is based in Woburn, in February.
When she was finally reunited with her prized possession on Monday, Slyker said she was more upset than excited, distressed by the flute’s poor condition.
“I thought I would be super happy to get the flute back, but it really uprooted all those emotions,” said Slyker, who received undergraduate and graduate degrees in music performance, focusing on flute, from the University of New Hampshire and the Longy School of Music. “When I finally got it, I thought I was gonna be ecstatic, but it was in bad shape and I was mad that somebody had stolen it, so I was kind of just upset when I got it home.”
She continued: “But then obviously I’m happy to have it back now, and I can’t wait to actually just get it fixed up, and then it will be like new again hopefully.”
The flute, left on the floor of a Metro Cab minivan after Slyker returned from a shift at the Howl at the Moon piano bar, where she still works, couldn’t have been lost at a worse time, Slyker said.
She was set to play as a substitute in an orchestra when the flute went missing. When she arrived at a rehearsal with a borrowed flute, she knew her performance was lacking.
“Those instruments, there’s a reason that you have to pay so much money for them,” she said. “You play on a student flute, it’s just going to play out of tune and it doesn’t sound good.”
Slyker said at the time her goal was to play in an orchestra, and when the opportunity vanished along with her flute it was “really sad.”
It took Slyker five years to save up the money to buy a replacement flute.
Now, she plans to get the once-lost flute overhauled — a long, expensive process that includes taking it apart and replacing the pads and corks.
Slyker plans to compare the lost flute to the one she saved up for to see which one she enjoys playing more.
“I’m actually excited to play it,” she said. “I do have a different brand now so that’s why I’m really interested once it’s been cleaned up and repaired to play them back to back and see the difference.”
The lost flute holds special significance for Slyker — not just because of its high value but because it was customized for her preferences as a player.
“When I had the money I went to meet the flute maker and they let you try all of their flutes and you can pick out exactly which one you want and customize it,” she said. “I had some wrist problems so they added a key extension and I got the lightest weight metal they had so that it wouldn’t hurt my wrist and then I got just some engraving on it and just some little style things like that.”
When she went to purchase a replacement, Slyker said she “thought for sure” she would end up with a replica of her lost model but wound up going a different direction.
It’s “really weird” for Slyker to have the flute back in her life after it was gone for so long.
“It’s like you forgot what something looks like a little bit or like something that you’ve had had as a kid that you haven’t seen in several years, so I was like, ‘Oh wow,’ it was almost like a feeling of nostalgia.”
Charlie McKenna can be reached at charlie.mckenna@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @charliemckenna9.