Where We Work, From Fletcher Hills to Crest

Downtown & Main Street

The blocks around the Arch, Prescott Promenade and The Magnolia, and the apartment streets that run off them: Chase, Lexington, Madison, Ballantyne, the numbered avenues. Older two- and three-story walk-ups, courtyard buildings from the 60s and 70s, and duplexes tucked behind storefronts. Most calls here are move-in rekeys, lockouts after a night out on Main, and rear-door hardware for the shops, markets and bakeries between Magnolia and Second Street. The El Cajon Transit Center on Marshall Avenue brings a steady run of car lockouts at the park-and-ride. We come in on Main or Magnolia from the I-8 and it's a short drive from anywhere in the core; parking is the slow part, so tell us if there's a loading zone.

A downtown detail worth knowing: many of the older walk-ups have a locked street door plus the unit door, and the street door is usually on its own key. When we rekey a unit we ask the manager about the street door too, so a new tenant isn't handed a key that only works upstairs. On Main Street the shop owners tend to be the landlords of the apartments above, and the same visit often covers the back door of the bakery and the two units over it.

Most asked for: turnover accounts and storefront hardware and household rekeys.

Fletcher Hills

The hillside streets off Navajo Road and Fletcher Parkway, up toward Grossmont College and the La Mesa line. Fletcher Hills is 1950s and 60s ranch houses on curving streets with views back across the valley, and many still have their original front doors, hollow trim jambs and the short-screw strike plates that came with them. Homes here change hands to young families and retirees who inherit sixty years of unknown keys, so the two jobs we do most are a move-in rekey and, on the same visit, a strike reinforcement with 3-inch screws and a Grade 1 deadbolt. Sliders on the view side are the other weak point. Response is quick from the Fletcher Parkway exit; the hills add a minute or two of winding, not much more.

The doors up here are often the best part of the house: solid wood slabs from the original build that are worth keeping. We don't talk anyone out of a good door. We fix the frame around it, key the garage-entry door alike with the front, and leave the 1958 hardware where it still works.

Most asked for: deadbolts and strike reinforcement.

Bostonia

The north end along North Second Street, Broadway, Pepper Drive and East Bradley Avenue. Bostonia is dense and mostly rental: fourplexes, small courtyard complexes, older single-family houses split into units, and mobile-home parks toward the east. Half of it is inside the city and half is county, and nobody who lives there cares which. This is turnover country. Property owners call us for scheduled rekeys between tenants and for master key systems on the small buildings they've held for decades; renters call us for move-in rekeys and for lockouts. We stage near the I-8/SR-67 interchange and come up Second Street or Broadway; from there it's a few minutes to anywhere in Bostonia.

Shared gates are the Bostonia wrinkle. A fourplex with one pedestrian gate and one laundry door means the tenant key, the gate key and the laundry key have to be thought through together at every turnover, or someone ends up locked out of the laundry with a fresh unit key in their hand. We keep a card for each building on our account list so the next visit starts where the last one ended.

Most asked for: move-in rekeys and turnover accounts.

Granite Hills

East of downtown toward the mountain, around Granite Hills High School, Granite Hills Drive and the streets that climb off East Madison and Dehesa Road. Bigger lots than the flats, ranch houses with side yards, workshops and RV gates, and a lot of glass: patio sliders that open onto a view of El Capitan and get used every day. The calls are about the back of the house more than the front: slider locks and anti-lift blocks, gate latches that actually lock, padlocks on the workshop, and window locks that let a bedroom vent on a hot night. All-keys-lost car jobs come from these driveways too, because the second key is usually somewhere in the house nobody can find. Drive time from the interchange is a bit longer than downtown; the roads are straight and it goes quickly.

Granite Hills also has the most side-yard RV gates in the city, and an RV gate with a cheap padlock is an open invitation to the trailer parked behind it. A shrouded padlock on a proper hasp, keyed alike with the house, is a twenty-minute fix we do a lot out here.

Most asked for: slider locks, gates and windows.

Greenfield

The neighborhood along Greenfield Drive between Main Street and the I-8, with its own freeway exit and a mix of apartment buildings, older houses and mobile-home communities. Because the exit is right there, Greenfield produces more corridor car lockouts than anywhere except Parkway Plaza: gas stations, the shopping strip, and commuters who pulled off the 8 to make a call and locked the keys in with the engine running. On the housing side it's move-in rekeys for apartments and mobile homes, and mobile homes have their own door hardware, which we carry. From the interchange we take the 8 one exit east and we're there.

Mobile-home doors deserve a note. The locks are a different size from a house lock, the doors are thinner, and the hardware-store deadbolt that fits a stick-built house won't fit them. We stock the mobile-home-specific deadbolts and the latch sets, so a Greenfield park resident gets it done in one visit instead of a parts-order wait.

Most asked for: car lockouts and rekeys.

Rancho San Diego

South and east along Jamacha Road, Avocado Boulevard and Campo Road, past the Rancho San Diego Town Center to Cuyamaca College. Newer than the city: 1980s and 90s townhomes and single-family tracts with HOAs, gated entries and clubhouse pools. The jobs match the housing. HOA boards call about pool-gate locks and self-closers, mail kiosks and pedestrian gates; homeowners call about slider locks on tract houses and, more than anywhere else, car keys, because this is where the two-car households with one working fob live. Cuyamaca College's lots get their share of lockouts during finals. The drive from central El Cajon runs down Jamacha and is longer than the flats; we'll give you a real number when you call rather than pretend it's around the corner.

Two things the HOAs ask about most: the pool gate that has to self-close and self-latch to satisfy the county's pool code, and a mail kiosk where half the residents have lost a key. We handle the compartment locks on the kiosk and leave the carrier lock to the post office, and we set pool-gate hardware up so the board can show an inspector it latches every time.

Most asked for: car keys and fob programming and HOA gate hardware.

Crest

Up the hill on La Cresta Road and Mountain View Road to a community that feels a long way from the valley floor because it is. Larger properties, outbuildings, horse setups, and gates on long driveways. We're honest about the ETA to Crest: the climb adds real minutes, and we say so on the phone. The work is mostly hardware: gate locks and padlocks, workshop and barn doors, deadbolts on houses that were built for the view and not the door. One thing we tell every Crest homeowner: keep a spare house key somewhere you can grab it on an evacuation night, because when the wind is up and the fire's on the ridge, nobody should be looking for keys. We can set up a keyed lockbox for exactly that.

Because the drive is longer, we bundle Crest work. If you need the front door rekeyed, mention the shed and the gate too, and we bring the padlocks and hasps so one trip covers the property. Neighbors up here often book the same afternoon for the same reason, and we're happy to run two stops in a row.

Most asked for: gates, outbuildings and deadbolts.

Winter Gardens

North of Bostonia along Winter Gardens Boulevard and Pepper Drive, running up toward the Lakeside line. Older single-family houses on good-sized lots, many of them rentals now, and a scattering of small apartment buildings and mobile-home parks. Plain, working neighborhood, and the work is plain too: rekeys when a rental turns over, rekeys when a family buys the house they'd been renting, lockouts for renters coming home from a late shift. Lots of security screen doors here that need a proper lock. We come up Second Street or Pepper from the interchange and it's a straightforward drive.

The buy-the-house-you-rented rekey is a Winter Gardens specialty. The new owner already has a key; what they don't have is any idea who else does after years of the property being managed from a distance. A full rekey with every door keyed alike, plus a strike reinforcement on the front door, is the usual first-week job.

Most asked for: rekeys.

Blossom Valley

East out the 8 past Los Coches Road, toward Lake Jennings and Old Highway 80. Semi-rural ranchettes, horse properties and older homes on acreage, a long way from a hardware store. Gates and garages are most of the work: driveway gate locks, padlocks on tack rooms and shipping containers, detached garages with three different keys nobody can tell apart, keyed alike so one ring covers the place. Trucks are the other half. Work trucks and farm trucks lose keys, and an all-keys-lost job on a Ford or Chevy pickup in a Blossom Valley driveway is a normal week for us. Drive time from central El Cajon is real; we'll quote it when you call.

Shipping containers used as storage are common out here, and the factory hasps on them are made for a bolt seal, not a padlock. A container lock box welded or bolted over the hasp, with a shrouded padlock inside it, is the right answer, and we can supply the lock and key it with the rest of the property.

Most asked for: gates and garages and truck keys.

Dehesa Valley

Out Dehesa Road from Granite Hills toward Sycuan, with Harbison Canyon Road climbing off it. Rural properties, ranch gates, long driveways, a golf resort and a casino. Two kinds of calls. The first is the casino: keys locked in a car in the Sycuan garage at two in the morning, which is why we don't mind the after-hours drive down Dehesa. The second is ranch hardware: gate locks, padlocks for pump houses and sheds, deadbolts on houses that sit a quarter mile from the road. Cell signal thins out in the canyons, so give us the gate code and a landmark when you call, and we'll confirm the ETA with the drive included.

For the casino lockouts, a tip that saves everyone time: note the parking level and the nearest pillar number before you walk in, and text it to us when you call. The garage is big, the signal inside is poor, and the tech who knows where you are is the tech who gets there first.

Most asked for: late-night car lockouts and gates and outbuildings.

Just outside our lines

Lakeside, Santee, La Mesa, Spring Valley, Alpine, Jamul and Harbison Canyon are all a normal drive for us and we go there for the trip charge on the pricing page. Past that, we'll tell you straight if the drive makes the job a poor deal for you, and we'll help you find someone closer rather than take the trip. To ask, call with the cross streets and we'll answer in a sentence.