Have you ever Picked a Lock in an Emergency?

[jailersmith]

A few years back the on duty prison steward locked his keys in the kitchen. The lock was a commercial grade Schlage KnK on a steel door. I unscrewed the rosette then retracted the latchbolt. Problem solved. The locks are change key only for security reasons and all other keys are made as needed from keying charts.

[raimundo]

A bit of a reply to butterboys post,
Gratitude is radioactive, slightly arm, the half life is less than a week.

[raimundo]

Ok, that was suppose to say 'slightly warm', but this keyboard has an intermittent w key.

[Puzzlerf]

A guy called my and aked how much to open his truck I told him $40 and then he was like i dont have any money on me, it was cold out so I was just like Ill be right there.
Showed up and told him to jump in and warm up , opened the truck and was like ok you got my # give me a call to catch up with me, he gave me his name and # ,I called and left a message with the guy but will probably never get paid.
I just felt for the guy , I guess its why I do this kind of work, I have 2 tow trucks also , I just like to help people.

Before I was a locksmith I locked my keys in my own car at a rest area way out in the middle of no where. Another driver gave me a coat hanger, and the grounds keeper guy helped me spread the door with a shovel. I've been wanting to help a stranger as a way to pay back the people who helped me, just my boss won't let me not charge... Hoping to come across someone in a parking lot.

[Cryogenick]

This last saturday I was a co-DJ at this nice pizza place/bar here in Berkeley CA...My friend that asked me to play is their regular audio engineer/set up guy and when we got there he realized he didnt have his keys for the equipment locker, lost them somewhere in his car...I told him I could probably open it, had my pick set on me. Silly guy was worried that picking it would somehow damage the lock and even after I told him it wouldn't, he insisted on going back and searching his car for the key...20 minutes of digging around under the seats resulted in no keys so we went back and I opened both locks on the cabinet in under a minute. Both were simple Y11 keyway wafer locks with 4 wafers, I suppose I should have insisted that I tried it before we went back to his car to search more, but he doesn't know anything about picking and really thought that picking them would somehow damage them, he even went back to check the locks after the manager showed up later with his set of keys...worked fine.

-KR

[5thcorps]

Many times at the garahe where I work guys have stumbled to work in the morning having forgotten their toolbox keys. I keep a pickset at work and they all know that. So about once a month I'm a hero.
Also a few times i've been out somewhere and used a vending machine to get a drink but it takes the money and doesn't vend. i just walk back to my truck and get out my tubular pick and open the machine and take out what i wanted. Only once has security of any kind interfered. After i explained that it took my money I told him to go check the surveilance tape and watch nothing come out of the machine. He said no that's not necessary just be quick about it. He stood behind me blocking veiw of others while I opened the machine. I took out my drink and he said "I'll take one too".

[5thcorps]

2 emergency picks in 1 day! A fellow tech forgot his toolbox keys again then 22 hours later my mother in law lacked herself out of her house.half diamond later for each and presto!

[oORusHOo]

Two weeks ago a friend of mine was having a house party and i was one of the first to arrive.

I asked him for a beer whilst he was getting everything prepaired and he said he'd kept all £120's worth of the nights alcohol outside his
bedroom window / on a ledge as it's so, so cold in the UK at the moment ( and it wouldn't all fit in the fridge ).

10 minutes before everyone else had turned up, and i was frantically picking this guys door (it was one of those doorknob/locks, and as it was a student diggs where nothing is ever maintained,
it was falling appart and frequently locked it's self randomly, although he normally had his keys on him and/or doesn't close his door fully)

Anyway, after 9 minutes of frantic picking/raking (i have one of those southord key-chain mini-pick sets) it wasn't picking open.

I tried picking it locked and lo nd behold got it to turn in around 30 seconds - but i didn't exactly have a plug spinner on me at the time, haha.
So what do i do? We've got people downstairs ringing the doorbell, there's crappy music blaring out from all angles,
and the only thing that is going to get me through the night without a severe fit of depression is behind a 1.5x locked door.

Tension wrench goes in... twist it to as close to the locked position before the pins drop down.... and smack that wrench downwards as hard as i can >_<

Lock popped open, tension wrench flew off and disappeared forever - but i got enough booze to keep me merrily inebriated for the rest of that night, and the majority of the next day.

The best bit was every 10 minutes or so when someone got a new drink, a bunch of the really drunk ones would shout "All hail to John!" (my name) and raise their beer.
I just sat on the sofa watching Have I Got News For You, followed by QI with the subtitles on. F**king students...