About

A town where the door opens without a key.

One van, out to any door at any hour: a lobby reader that went dark before six and left a whole building on the sidewalk, a cylinder under an entry panel that has not been turned since the building opened, a mail door whose lock was drilled out years ago, a front door on one of the old streets that has opened the same way since the fifties. Cylinder stock, a key machine and the pinning kit ride with it, so the key under the panel is cut and tried the same visit. This is how a call runs.

(650) 405-1526 Book online

Hale Lock Co. covers Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula from a van. There is no storefront, because nothing that needs a locksmith can be carried to one. The base sits by Castro Street, and the eight neighborhoods inside the city are 12 to 26 minutes from it: Old Mountain View about 12, Shoreline West 14, Sylvan Park 16, Cuesta Park 18, Rex Manor 20, Greater San Antonio 22, North Whisman 24, and North Bayshore 26 out by the water. That works out to 18 on average. Los Altos at 15, Menlo Park 21, Los Altos Hills 23, East Palo Alto 24, Stanford 25 and Atherton 27 run on the same price list. The phone is answered at every hour, on every day of the year.

One sentence holds the whole business here: the door is opened with a credential rather than a key, and the key underneath it gets found only on the morning the reader goes dark. In the newer blocks four doors can stand between the sidewalk and an apartment — the lobby, the garage gate, the package room, the mail wall, sometimes the elevator — and each one answers to a fob, a card or a code. Beneath every one of them sits an ordinary mechanical cylinder that works the same latch, and it is the single part of the entry nobody maintains. It stands unused for years, and on the day it is needed the pins are dry and the blank in the manager's drawer was never taken to a machine. The old streets are the other half of the city and the plain half. Around Castro Street, Cuesta Park and Sylvan Park the houses are prewar and fifties, one cylinder in the knob, and the work there is new pins after a purchase and a real deadbolt where there has only ever been a latch. The contrast between those two halves is what this trade looks like in Mountain View. The third thing worth knowing: credentials get switched off, not recut. A resident leaves, the fob comes off a list the building keeps, and that is a different job from repinning a cylinder, which is the job that is ours.

There is one price list for the whole city, and $89 of every figure on it is the call-out, already included. House lockout $138–$252. Car lockout $112–$208. Business lockout $148–$272. Repair after a forced door $178–$465. Rekeying is $32–$50 per cylinder, and each cylinder after the first costs less because the trip is paid for inside the first one. Replacement hardware $133–$345, a keypad or app lock $205–$505, a safe opening $212–$559. On the commercial side, exit devices are $322–$815 per door and storefront hardware $168–$495, while master key systems and access control are quoted after the doors have been walked and counted. For vehicles: a car key $163–$438, a car fob $98–$208, an ignition $194–$478, motorcycle keys $132–$302. An arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $52 and one between midnight and 7am adds $92, both inside the total before you say yes. Ninety days on the labor is on the receipt. Two things are not on this list at all: garage door springs, cables, panels and opener motors, which are a different trade, and putting a fob back onto a building's access list, which the building does itself.

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.

Every reader has a cylinder under it, and that cylinder is the way inA dark panel is not a sealed building. Behind the plate, or under a cover on the face of the lock, there is a mechanical cylinder that works the same latch, and picked rather than drilled it usually opens intact. The catch is that it has been standing idle since the building was handed over: dry pins, a plug that has never met a key, now and then a cam that has drifted out of position. That is the piece this trade is actually about here. Getting the door open is the first half of the visit. Leaving that cylinder in a state where the next person can turn a key in it is the other half.

The price you hear on the phone already has the clock in itOne number covers the trip, the labor and the parts. The $89 call-out is part of that number, not a line that appears once the van is at your building. Late work moves it in a way you are told about first: $52 for an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $92 between midnight and 7am. After that the figure holds. A cylinder that turned out to be seized, a reader that stayed dark after the door opened, a mail lobby lock that needed a new cam — none of that reopens the math.

Credentials are the building's to switch off, cylinders are ours to repinWhen somebody moves out of a newer block here, nobody cuts a new key for the lobby. The old fob comes off a list and stops working, and that list belongs to whoever manages the building. We say so on the call instead of taking the job and improvising. What is ours is everything mechanical on the same doors: the override cylinder behind the reader, the unit door, the mail box, the package room, the gate latch beside the garage ramp. On a shared door we ask who is authorizing the work before anyone drives out, because that question sits between you and the building.

A cut metal key for every override, tried while you watchAlmost every keypad deadbolt and almost every reader-controlled entry ships with a blank that nobody ever takes to a machine. It stays a blank right up to the night it matters. So the key is cut at the van on the same visit, turned in the cylinder while you are standing beside it, and you decide where it lives — anywhere except inside the door it opens. The labor carries 90 days in writing and the part carries whatever term its maker gives it.

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

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.

Old Mountain View Shoreline West Sylvan Park Cuesta Park Rex Manor Greater San Antonio North Whisman North Bayshore Los Altos Menlo Park Los Altos Hills East Palo Alto Stanford Atherton

(650) 405-1526

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.

(650) 405-1526 Book online