Armenian cellist finds stolen instrument after 16 years

US Armenian musician Vahe Hayrikyan has found his cello that was stolen from his apartment in 1996, The Lost Angeles Times reported.

Early in 2011, 15 years after the 200-year old instrument went missing, Gary Mandell, the owner of Boulevard Music in Culver City, bought a used cello as a rental instrument. He paid $900 to a friend who had been given the cello in lieu of payment for a house-painting job. Mandell forgot about the cello for a few months, then saw an ad in The Times for instrument appraisals and figured he'd find out what the cello was really worth.
 

The cello instructor at Mandell's shop, Kevan Torfeh, thought it might be worth far more and recommended different appraisers, none of whom could agree on the true value. Mandell eventually shipped it to Chicago, where a nationally known appraiser was stumped about its origins and sent it back.
 

Early this year, Mandell decided to try to sell it. Two people were interested, and by chance, I've met both of them.
 

The first was Mandell's friend Robert David Hall, an actor who lost both legs in a highway collision many years ago and plays a coroner on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." Hall introduced President Obama in 2010 at aWhite House celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and I was there along with my friend, former Juilliard student and skid row resident Nathaniel Ayers. Ayers performed at the same event.
 

Hall offered $7,500 for the cello, which he wanted to give to his wife as a present. But Torfeh, the cello teacher, wanted it too. Torfeh, who has played with my friend Nathaniel in concert with the African American Chamber Music Society Orchestra, offered $8,500, but Mandell had already agreed to the deal with Hall.
 

Mandell had just lost out on a $7,500 payday. But as a musician himself, he was thrilled to reunite another musician with a prized instrument that had been on the lam for 16 years.
 

Hayrikyan covered Mandell's expenses and agreed to give a concert at the shop later this year. To his friend Kevan "Columbo" Torfeh, he gave one of the two bows.
 

On Friday morning, all three men gathered at Mandell's shop on Sepulveda. Hayrikyan brought the cello with him and, in the quiet of the shop before it opened for business, delivered a beautiful rendition of the Bach Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor.