They don't know precisely how the violin made its way to their family nearly a century ago, but they know how it disappeared.
On the bus.
Eighth-grader Corynn Smith had simply forgotten to retrieve it from under her seat after her Jan. 26 ride home from Lux Middle School. The StarTran bus carried it around and eventually ended up downtown where, according to security camera footage, a pair of men picked it up and hauled it off.
The family has been searching for it since, checking pawn shops, music stores and Craigslist, and reaching out to reporters.
“It's not a Stradivarius,†said Corynn's father, Russ Smith. “But to my family, it’s priceless.â€
Here's why: Their family history is ingrained in the instrument. Corynn's great-great-great grandfather Al Smith started playing that violin around the turn of the last century near Ashland. And in 1926, he won a fiddling contest on Omaha radio station WOAW.
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He and other contestants performed on the air and the audience at home chose their favorite. A little like “The Voice,†but decades before text-message ballots.
“Listeners would send telegrams. And all these people were voting for Al,†Russ said.
He won another contest in 1933, and entered others, and the violin started its ascent through five generations of Smiths. Corynn's great-great grandfather Clyde owned it next, then her great-grandfather Don, then her grandfather Duane and then her father.
None of them played it like Al. None of them played it much at all.
“The standing joke is, I fiddle with it,†Russ said. “Everybody pulled out the bow once in a while and made the violin squeak and squawk.â€
Corynn started playing in elementary school with a small rental violin. When she entered the eighth-grade, her father asked her if she wanted to play her family's hand-me-down.
And she did, until it disappeared. “That was a big blow to my family,†Russ said. “My uncle, who's still alive, my dad, who's still alive, they really took it hard. And it hurt her feelings to realize she had lost the heirloom.â€
Corynn sent her father a text immediately that afternoon. Russ tried reaching StarTran but the office was already closed, and by the time he called the next morning, the violin was gone.
He offered a $500 reward for its return.
This week, a stranger made it $600.
Phil Schenkel watched Corynn nearly tear up telling the story Monday to a 10/11 News reporter, and he was moved. And he was mad. And he was willing to add $100 to sweeten the pot.
“I saw that on television and I felt so bad and it just kind of touched me. And I thought, 'What kind of lowlife would do something like that?' They have no respect for anything.â€
Schenkel grew up in a big family -- two brothers before World War II, he and a brother and sister after. But cancer killed their mother Rose when she was 41, and a heart attack took their father Phil when he was 44.
Then the children were pretty well split up, he said, with the youngest going to Cedars and Boys Town and foster homes. Schenkel joined the military the week after he graduated.
Their parents didn't have much and they didn't leave much, so any piece of their past was important. Schenkel ended up with his father's masonry tools -- “He was probably the best block layer you'd find†-- but lost them a few years ago, when thieves raided his garage.
He knows how the Smith family feels. “None of it was ever retrieved. They didn't mean anything to anyone, but they sure meant something to me.â€
Russ Smith was thrilled to learn of Schenkel's generosity, and planned to renew his rounds with pawn shops and music stores, searching for the prize-winning fiddle.
But so many weeks after it disappeared, he's realistic.
“We've all accepted the fact it's gone and we might not see it again. But we'd like to see it again.â€