When Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X played his solo at the Air Canada Centre Saturday night, he made a dozen people cry.

That’s because the 12 were the only ones to understand the significance of the guitar in his hands.

The semi-hollow electric guitar, with three star-shaped ports, was custom-designed by Mississauga resident Kara Shred, who died suddenly Sept 19.

Kristi Vilmansen-Shred, mother of the 25-year-old’s graphic designer and hobby musician, found her daughter’s body when she went to wake her for work.

“We were told it was probably a congenital heart problem we didn’t know about,” Vilmansen-Shred says. “It’s been staggering.”

Kara was relentlessly happy. “Just so artistic, creative, crazy and fun,” Vilmansen-Shred says. “She’d get so excited about different things and she just wouldn’t stop.”

Trying to find some solace, shortly after Kara’s death the family gifted her beloved creation to The Guitar World in Mississauga, asking store owner and family friend Jim Toris to allow anyone who asked to play the instrument.

The gesture was meant to honour the young woman’s love of music. Kara started playing piano at age 5 and picked up guitars after entering high school. Guitar playing was a special connection she shared with her father, Larry Shred, who had split from Vilmansen-Shred when Kara was 2. Kara had four guitars and the family didn’t want them to gather dust — especially that one.

“It is such a beautiful, unique kind of custom piece that has so much of Kara in it, we want it to be played by lots and lots of people,” Vilmansen-Shred says.

So they brought it to The Guitar World. Toris created a display, The Journey of Kara’s Guitar, and started a photo album on The Guitar World’s Facebook page, posting pictures of customers playing the instrument.

Enter rock star Phil Xenidis, known as Phil X, who recently replaced Richie Sambora as the guitarist with Bon Jovi.

Xenidis, a Mississauga native and friend of Toris, saw the post about Kara. “All I saw was this young girl with a huge smile holding up the guitar she just got,” he says. “And it put a big smile on my face.”

He read about her death and how the family wanted people to play her guitar and “I just texted my buddy Jim on the spot to say ‘I’d love to play Kara’s guitar when we play the Air Canada Centre with Bon Jovi,’” he says.

The gesture was beyond what anyone had imagined, Toris says, adding “he blew my mind away when he explained how he wanted to be part of it.”

Xenidis didn’t want to make a fuss. “I didn’t even tell Jon (Bon Jovi),” he says. “I didn’t tell anybody. For me it was more of a personal touch, something I wanted to do for the family.”

Xenidis offered the family tickets and backstage passes, but they didn’t need the tickets — a friend who heard the news had arranged for them to have the Bank of Montreal’s box.

Picking up the guitar the afternoon of the show, Xenidis didn’t have a plan, but he knew he wanted to use it for one of the band’s monster hits. “At the sound check I plugged it in and played around on it a little bit,” he says. He settled on “Wanted: Dead or Alive” — a number planned for the encore.

Non musicians can’t appreciate the risk Xenidis took to play an unfamiliar instrument, says Shred, but he can. “That Phil would do this for someone he didn’t know, had never met and to play an unknown guitar in front of tens of thousands,” he says. “It was just an absolutely phenomenal gift.”

It was an unusual guitar to play, Xenidis admits.

“It was weird too,” Xenidis says, “because at the beginning of the song I play a guitar with a humungous neck, then I switched to Kara’s guitar, which has a tiny neck,” he says. “I thought ‘OK buddy, get used to it pretty quick.’”

The family met Xenidis backstage to thank him and Kara’s guitar is now back at The Guitar World.

As word spreads, the guitar’s fame grows. “Who knows, maybe it will travel around the world playing on stage with famous people,” Shred says.

Whereas the family’s original dream didn’t extend past the walls of The Guitar World, suddenly the possibilities seem endless.

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“It could be anybody on any stage,” Xenidis agrees. “If that’s what this started, then more power to it.”

Wanted: Dead or Alive

Watch Phil X play Kara Shred's guitar at the Bon Jovi concert.