About
A town where the door opens without a key.
Hale answers Mountain View at any hour, and the call is as often about a building as a house: a lobby reader dark before six with everyone out on the sidewalk, a cylinder behind an entry panel nobody has turned since opening day, a mail door drilled out years back, a fifties front door on one of the old streets. The key for the cylinder under the panel is cut in the van and tested in the lock before anyone leaves.
4.9 / 5· 198 reviews from Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula
2017
On Mountain View doors since
24/7
Phone picked up
90 days
On the labor
Two Mountain Views, one owner
Most calls I take here start at a door that reads a card and end at the brass cylinder hidden under it. I have worked mid-Peninsula doors for fifteen years, and since 2017 this van has carried stock for both Mountain Views: last decade's lobbies and the fifties porches.
I cut the override key and try it in the cylinder under the reader before leaving the lobby. My figure already holds the call-out and the hour, and the 90 days are printed on your receipt.
Lars Krogh
Owner of Hale since 2017 · 15 years on mid-Peninsula doors
Independent since 2017, and the 650 number ends here
Hale Lock Co. has been working Mountain View doors since 2017, out of a van rather than from behind a counter. The lock that needs attention is bolted to a lobby door off San Antonio, a garage gate in North Whisman or a fifties porch two streets from the park, and not one of those is going to travel, so the bench travels instead. The van stages by Castro Street, and the phone is picked up at every hour of every day, holidays included. Lars Krogh leads the work on it and still runs calls, with fifteen years of mid-Peninsula doors behind him — more years than the company itself has, which is the order these things tend to happen in.
What this is not, said plainly, because the search results make it a fair thing to ask. Not a franchise. No dealership behind it, no tie to any lock maker or any car brand. Not a lead broker that takes an address and auctions it to whichever van bids for it. One 650 line rings this business, one dispatch answers that line, and the technician on your step is paid by the name printed at the top of your receipt.
Two kinds of door in one city, and both ride in the van
Mountain View is two housing stocks sharing one street grid, and the shelves on board are loaded for both at once. For the recent blocks in North Whisman and Greater San Antonio: mortise and rim cylinders of the kind that live behind an entry panel, cam locks and keys for mail walls and package rooms, electric strikes, exit devices, and keypad deadbolts with the override blanks that ship uncut in the box. For the old streets around Castro Street, Cuesta Park and Sylvan Park: plain deadbolts and knob sets in the sizes fifties front doors take, long strikes and jamb reinforcement, and the pinning kit. Narrow-stile hardware for the aluminum glass shopfronts, and blanks with the programmers to match for most of what parks at the curb here, hybrids and EVs included.
The key machine is the piece that earns its shelf space in this city. Under every reader sits a mechanical cylinder working the same latch, and the blank cut for it has almost never been anywhere near a cutter. Carrying the cutter means that key is made, turned in the cylinder while you watch and left in your hand on the visit that exposed the problem, instead of becoming a second appointment on a door somebody is propping shut in the meantime.
The Key Under the Reader
Four rules that hold the same on a lobby door off San Antonio, a garage gate in North Whisman, a fifties front door in Sylvan Park and a glass shop door on Castro Street. The workmanship warranty runs 90 days and it lives on the paperwork, not in the sales talk.
- Castro Street and the blocks behind it — Old Mountain View, Cuesta Park, Sylvan Park
- the old town
- Rex Manor and the flat streets around it, two cars in the garage and a service door on the side
- the sixties and seventies tracts
- North Whisman and Greater San Antonio, built dense on ground that used to hold light industry
- the recent blocks
What happens between your call and the key in your hand
The number is fixed before you hang up. It comes off the published ranges, the $89 call-out is folded inside it instead of waiting at the bottom of an invoice, and the clock is added in the same breath: $52 on an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $92 between midnight and 7am. Master key systems and access control are the single exception, because a door count guessed down a phone line is an argument waiting to happen, so those are walked, counted and written down before any number is spoken. Then you hear the wait. Eighteen minutes is the citywide average, 12 around Castro Street and 26 out at North Bayshore, with Los Altos at 15, Menlo Park 21, Los Altos Hills 23, East Palo Alto 24, Stanford 25 and Atherton 27, all of them on the same price list as the city itself.
A text goes out carrying the technician name and a window taken from where the van actually is. At the address, photo identification is read against the door, or the vehicle paperwork against the plate, before a case comes off the shelf. The opening runs through the cylinder rather than through the leaf wherever the mechanism allows it, and where there is an override under a reader it is cleaned, exercised and keyed to metal that fits in a pocket. Card or tap on the spot, an itemized receipt by email, and the 90 days on the labor printed on that receipt rather than promised out loud.
The part of the call where we say no
A fair number of visits end smaller than the caller expected, and that is the honest answer rather than a discount. A deadbolt that will not throw has usually lost its alignment and not its guts: the leaf settled on tired hinges, the bolt now catches the edge of the strike hole, and the repair is a plate moved a fraction and two long screws driven into framing. Five mismatched keys handed over at closing is one repin at $32–$50 per cylinder, not five new locks. A brass cylinder with sound internals and tired springs gets repinned and stays where it is, because replacing it would mean selling you something thinner than what is already hanging on the door.
Other jobs are turned away before a van burns the drive. Putting a fob back onto a building access list is not ours at any price: that list belongs to whoever manages the building, and anybody promising otherwise on the phone is selling access they do not hold. Garage door springs, cables, panels and opener motors are a different trade, and that is said in the first minute rather than in your driveway. A short list of makes locks key programming behind a dealer tool, and you deserve to hear it before you have paid for a trip. And on a lobby door, a garage gate or a mail wall we ask who is authorizing the work before anyone drives out, because that question sits between you and the building and is not ours to answer for you.
Where we work
Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
The questions that are about us, not about the door
Are you an independent locksmith, or a call center that finds one?+
Independent, and Mountain View is the territory. The 650 number on this site rings the business itself, the technician sent out is paid by it, and your address is never passed on to a third van. It is worth asking, because a good share of the listings sitting above the map results are brokers: they take the call, keep a margin and hand the job to whoever answers, which is exactly why the figure quoted on a phone and the figure demanded on a doorstep so often disagree. Here the total said on the call is the total on the receipt.
How long have you been working on doors in this city?+
The business has run in Mountain View since 2017, on the same work the whole time: openings, repins, hardware replacement, storefront and warehouse doors, safes and car keys. Lars Krogh, who leads the van, carries fifteen years of mid-Peninsula doors. What those years actually buy is recognition: the override cylinders standing untouched since a building was handed over, the strike holes that drifted as a sixties tract settled, the aluminum shopfronts on Castro Street that go out of square long before their hardware fails. Those get named during the call instead of discovered on the sidewalk.
Is there a shop I can walk a lock into?+
There is none, and the absence is a choice rather than an oversight. A counter means rent, posted hours and a drive across town at the worst moment of your day, usually with a door standing open behind you. The van stages by Castro Street instead and moves toward whoever called, which is what puts the citywide average at 18 minutes and North Bayshore nearer 26. Cutting a key, pinning a cylinder, servicing an override behind a panel and pairing a car fob all happen at your curb, on the same visit that started the call.
How do I know the person knocking is actually yours?+
You already have the name, because it went out ahead of the van. The text sent at dispatch gives the technician name and the arrival window, and holding that text up against whoever knocks costs nothing and settles the question. If the two do not agree, you owe no explanation to anyone: send them off and call the 650 number back. On a shared entrance there is a check running the other way too, since proving who you are and holding the authority to order work on a lobby door are two separate things.
What if the cylinder will not come open without damage?+
You are told before any tool comes near the door. House deadbolts, unit cylinders, storefront latches and car doors come open non-destructively in most cases and keep working afterward. The awkward one here is the override cylinder under an entry panel: it has stood idle for years, the pins are dry, the plug has rarely met a key, and now and then it is seized past picking. When that happens the technician stops, explains what drilling does to the hardware, what a replacement cylinder costs and what else can be tried, then waits for your answer. The figure sealed on the call covers that conversation whichever way you decide.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say what the door reads, and the rest of the call is short
Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula, at any hour. A fob, a card, a code or a plain key, and how many doors stand between the sidewalk and you — that decides the work, and the work decides the number. The number comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. The labor carries 90 days, in writing.