A musician and his instrument form a bond unlike any other. The keys or strings can become an extension of the musician, clues to what lurks in the soul. And when that instrument is taken away, the musician loses a part of himself. Just ask Al Valenti, who, at 90, has just been reunited with a half-dozen instruments of wood and wire that have been central to his life since the Great Depression. Six guitars, three handmade just for him, were stolen 3{ years ago from his home near Egypt Lake. On Friday, detectives who found the guitars gave them back to the man who loves them. "These guys stay in your mind. They're such a high-class instrument," said Valenti. "It's like God when you're looking at them. "These guitars, you can have them for life," he said. "If no one steals it." That's exactly what happened in June 2001. Someone stole the guitars while he was out playing in a band at the American Legion Hall nearFlorida and Sligh avenues. The thief took only the six guitars. "But they took a hell of a batch there, you know?" Valenti said. Among the stolen guitars was a 1934 D'Angelico worth more than $100,000. John D'Angelico made so few of these handcrafted guitars that they were consecutively numbered, starting with No. 1104 and ending with 2164. Valenti's was No. 1296. The burglar also took two other D'Angelicos and three Gibson guitars, worth another $100,000 altogether. At the time, Valenti told the police he had no idea who would do such a thing. He was just an old man who played with some other old guys at the American Legion. Who would want to hurt him by stealing something so precious? he wondered. Detectives investigated, but the trail went cold. In November, it heated up. Tampa police Detective Chris Kessler traced serial numbers on Valenti's guitars and discovered that the Guitar Emporium in Louisville, Ky., had acquired all six guitars in the summer of 2001. The Guitar Emporium's owner told Kessler he had gotten the guitars at a trade show in Texas. They came from a Florida woman named Karen Ruhlen, the owner told Kessler. In the years since that Texas show, the Guitar Emporium's owner had sold the guitars to people across the United States. When Valenti heard the name Ruhlen, it didn't take him long to put two and two together. Ruhlen, he told Kessler, was the wife of Dick Ruhlen, a man he played with in the American Legion band. Shortly before the guitars disappeared, she was inside the home alone. Police say Dick Ruhlen wasn't involved. But by Nov. 22, detectives had enough evidence to charge Mrs. Ruhlen with the theft, said Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin. "I knew them both well, for many years," Valenti said. "I never suspected she would do anything like this. I trusted her." Mrs. Ruhlen, 55, agreed to meet with detectives at noon Nov. 22. But on her way to work from Wesley Chapel that morning, she died when her Dodge minivan hit a bulldozer parked in the median of Interstate 75 just north of State Road 56. Ruhlen was an instructor in the dental assistants program at Concorde Career Institute in Tampa. She had two sons and a granddaughter, her stepdaughter Gayle Miller told the Times in November. She had lived in the Tampa Bay area for about 30 years. With no suspect, detectives set out to return the stolen guitars to Valenti. They persuaded all the people who bought them from the Guitar Emporium to give them back. On Friday at the police station near Busch Gardens, Valenti stood before reporters and cameras and grinned like a little kid. He told reporters about the years he spent collecting all those beautiful instruments. The first American-born son of Italian immigrants, Valenti recalled how he got his first D'Angelico guitar at 17 from "my good friend" Mr. D'Angelico. He later acquired other D'Angelicos, including the one worth more than $100,000. He got his first job as a musician at 19, playing with a 14-piece band in the New Yorker Hotel on 8th Avenue in New York City. Valenti never finished high school, and he never married. "I was traveling too much with the bands. That wouldn't have been a good life for a woman." He said he moved with his mother and brother to Pompano Beach in 1980, and six months later they moved to Tampa to be close to other relatives. A decade ago, he quit the road for good and, at age 80, made Tampa his permanent home. When he moved into his home near Egypt Lake, he, of course, brought his guitars with him. The night they were stolen, he was playing at the American Legion with another of his guitars. He came home, and the other six were gone. "I wasn't sure they would even find them," he said, "but I was happy to see them today." Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at (813) 226-3373 or svansicklersptimes.com.