My pitch perfect student is refusing to help me tune the band

I am a high school band teacher with a terrible ear for pitch. Growing up, my elders always said I would have been the next John Phillips Souza if only I were able to know when I was sharp and when I was flat.

Recently, something happened to all my digital tuners that I kept in the band room. They stopped working entirely for no clear reason. No problem— I can just go but another one, right? Well, no. I live in a tiny village where the closest music store is 3 and a half hours away. I drove all the way there last week only to find out it had been burned to the ground. According to a passerby, the owner had torched his own store in order to protest the hypercommercialization of music. A cool story which I doubt has any truth to it.

The next thing I tried was Amazon, but apparently they only make deliveries to my village once every 3 months, and the next delivery wasn’t until March.

So I had to deal with the fact that I would not have a tuner for several months. But it quickly dusked on me that I had a student (Henva) who had perfect pitch. Bingo!

I asked Henva on Monday if she could fill in as the band tuner for a while, and she agreed. She was incredible— able to tune the entire band in 3 minutes flat.

She helped on Monday and on Tuesday, but then on Wednesday she refused. I tried to ask why, but it seemed like she was just having a bad day, so I didn’t push her and let the band practice slightly out of tune. I figured she would be better today, but instead she refused again. When asked why, she ran off.

I know this is an odd situation, but has anyone had anything like this happen? If so how did you resolve it?