Carol Seabury was driving on the I-8 just past Ocotillo on the morning of April 6 when she saw a guitar case by the side of the road. As an avid gardener, she was already thinking of planting and placing succulents in the guitar in her yard. She decided to drive to the next exit and turn around to pick up the case. Once she opened it, her first thought was, “Someone is missing this baby.” The guitar is a six-string “Big Baby” made by Taylor Guitars. Seabury noticed the neck of the guitar was broken, and there was other damage, too.
After spending the weekend in Yuma, she returned to Imperial Beach and spoke to her friend Shirley Nakawatase. They noticed the stickers on the case that pointed to the owner being a Navy SEAL. Nakawatase is an accountant who, in addition to her office in Imperial Beach, also has one in El Cajon, right next to Taylor Guitars. Enter Jim Truitt, Nakawatase and Seabury’s friend from their days at Mar Vista High School, who happened to work at Taylor Guitars, and the wheels were then put in motion. Nakawatase gave the guitar to Truitt, who brought it to work. Truitt thought the guitar should get fixed. “It’s something to someone,” he said. “It obviously fell off someone’s car or truck.”
“We decided we had to find the owner,” said Seabury. In the meantime, Truitt told the story to his coworkers and the owner of Taylor Guitars, who decided to fix the guitar at no charge. “Everybody heard the story, and Taylor was on board… as soon as we mentioned it probably belonged to someone in the military, they wanted to fix it,” recalled Truitt.
In the hope of finding the owner, Truitt got other people involved, including his friend Ivan and his next-door neighbor Paul, who works at the Navy Campus. “I was able to attach a picture of the guitar to an email and spammed every person I had contacts of on the base,” said Paul. While waiting for someone to respond, Ivan suggested donating the guitar to a new recruit if the owner was not found in one year.
Then Paul finally received an email that said, “I think I found the owner,” he recalled. The group called their effort: “Operation No Guitar Left Behind.”
On September 5, five months after it was found, the group finally handed the guitar to its owner and heard the other side of the story. The group gathered in a cul-de-sac in Imperial Beach and waited for the owner to arrive to pick up his guitar and see his reaction.
The owner of the guitar, whose name also happens to be Paul, recalled what happened the night he lost the instrument. He had packed his belongings from his apartment and put everything in his truck. The guitar was wedged between two totes but was sticking a bit high. Then the guitar fell off, “I realized it was gone immediately. I attempted to go back. By the time I was able to slow down, I was 1/4 mile away, and it was pitch black; it was too dangerous. I felt it made it off the road. It was a casualty,” he recalled. Paul said his mom bought the guitar for him during his senior year of high school in 2008, and he has had it through college and his time in the Navy.
A friend who accompanied him to the reunion with his guitar, was the person that responded to the email sent months prior, saying he thought he knew the owner. Paul is now living in Imperial Beach, and he and his friend had been talking about playing the guitar again just days earlier. “I really wish I had my guitar,” he recalled. That’s when his friend told him the guitar had been found and was repaired. “It’s really incredible. I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” said Paul.
Everyone was excited that this story had a happy ending.“I’m very pleased. I never thought [the guitar] would make it past my garden,” said Seabury.
Vol. 40, No. 38 – Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024
