A couple of magic men on the island.…

Hamid (left) and Cam check out the repaired guitar....

OK, I got­ta tell you a sto­ry about two guys who do mag­ic on the island.

Very dif­fer­ent kinds of mag­ic, brought togeth­er by a bro­ken guitar.

Back in Jan­u­ary, my son Cameron was return­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Fran­cis­co, and asked me to send his gui­tar to school by UPS, since he could­n’t car­ry it on the plane and because we had seen the video “Unit­ed Breaks Gui­tars” and that made us a lit­tle ner­vous, even though he was going on South­west. So we went to Post San Juan and Hamid helped us get it off with UPS, with insur­ance, pack­aged the way Cam received it in its hard-shell case three years before.

The guitar after it arrived in San Francisco....

Well, imag­ine Cam’s sur­prise when the gui­tar made it to SF…he opened it & the neck was shat­tered. Here’s where hero #1 comes in. Hamid was awe­some. UPS refused to cov­er the total cost to replace the gui­tar, say­ing the gui­tar was­n’t packed right & it was­n’t their fault. They did say they would pay some, if it was repairable.

Hamid spent a bunch of time in the back & forth relat­ed to this, try­ing to set things right. When he’d see me at bas­ket­ball games, he’d report the latest…he was a king, look­ing after us. I’ll go out of my way to do busi­ness with him & Dora anytime.

Bobby Warren

When the issue of whether it was repairable came up, I knew who I want­ed to see it — Bob­by War­ren (hero #2, if you ask me). His gui­tar-mak­ing & gui­tar-fix­ing busi­ness is RAW Gui­tars — check it out here.

Bob­by sur­prised me by say­ing, “Sure, I can fix that,” and then described how he would work the wood so he could make a new head that would fit right into the neck.

So, he took it to his shop. When I saw the fin­ished prod­uct (and hap­pi­ly gave him all the insur­ance mon­ey that UPS gave us, thanks to Hamid), I was astound­ed. The gui­tar plays well, the fret­board allows for smooth play­ing, and you’d have to look to see where the two pieces are joined — you sure could­n’t tell otherwise.

Peo­ple are always talk­ing about islanders help­ing islanders — these guys do it! Thanks, Bob­by & thanks, Hamid for being there when we need­ed you!

The repaired guitar - more solid than ever, thanks to Bobby

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