After a long day of marching with his 40-pound tuba, playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" to July 4th crowds in Delano and Apple Valley, Robert Cooley went to bed Friday night and drifted off to the pop, pop, popping of fireworks.

When he woke at 7 on Tuesday morning, he walked to his car parked in the alley behind his Minneapolis house. A rear window was smashed in, glass shards on the empty seat where he'd left his tuba.

"I imagine the thief just saw a big black case and used their imagination of what could be inside," Cooley wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

That thief likely had little idea that the new, 4-foot tall silver-plated tuba was worth more than the car it was sitting in. Valued at $12,000, the instrument was one of 70 horns the Minnesota Brass drum and bugle corps bought this year.

The group is the only Minnesota marching ensemble to use this brand of horn, said Eric Molho, corps director. "It's going to be hard for the thief to get rid of it at a pawnshop," Molho said. "And it's a tuba — it's not like you can hide one of those or turn it around on the street corner."

The thief reportedly tried to sell the tuba at Schmitt Music in Woodbury on Wednesday, then went across the street to another store, where police nabbed the brass bandit.

Colleen Kelly, Star Tribune
Robert Cooley tends to his tuba during a Minnesota Brass rehearsal in mid-June.

The alleged thief didn't take anything else from the car, Cooley said. His window is fixed thanks to insurance. Molho already received messages from other drum and bugle corps in the area, offering up loaner tubas so that Minnesota Brass won't have to play without that characteristic big-bellied sound.

This isn't the first theft for Minnesota Brass. Last September, more than $10,000 worth of percussion equipment disappeared from an equipment trailer, Molho said.

"It's certainly unfortunate that these things happen but people always offer to help," he said. "The corps groups here are always looking out for each other."

Mara Klecker • 612-673-4753