About
Nine doors to a house here, and one shop that counts them all.
An independent Pleasanton shop since 2012, working the whole set of doors a house here comes with: the entry, the garage service door, the gates, the cellar and the safe. Below is who picks up, what the van is loaded for, how one figure gets set before anyone drives, and who stands behind the ninety days.
2012
On Pleasanton doors since
19 min
Average drive
90 days
Workmanship warranty
Who answers for all nine
Most houses I work in here have more doors than anyone living in them can list, and the keys to half of them went home with a gardener or a contractor years ago. My job is to leave you knowing who can open what.
I have run this shop since 2012. The figure you are told on the call holds at the gate, and if a pool latch I set gives out inside ninety days, I come back for it.
Curt Lindahl
Owner · 18 years on Amador Valley doors · with Amador since 2012
No shop front, because a gate cannot be carried in
Amador Lock & Key works Pleasanton out of a van, day and night, holidays included. There is no shop front to call in at, and there is no point in one: a gate, a jammed entry or a safe in a closet cannot be picked up and brought in, so the workshop drives to them. The name comes from the Amador Valley, the floor of dry hills this whole town sits on and the answer most people here give when somebody asks where they live.
The van starts downtown, a few doors off Main, which puts the eight parts of the city between 12 and 26 minutes away: Downtown about 12, Val Vista 15, Mission Park 16, Birdland 17, Vintage Hills 19, Stoneridge and Hacienda 21, Foothill and Castlewood 24, Ruby Hill 26. Averaged across the eight, that is 19. Dublin at roughly 22 minutes, Sunol 24, Livermore 26, San Ramon 29, Danville 32 and Castro Valley 35 are charged from the same list.
Nine doors to a house, and keys scattered across town
One sentence covers most of the work in this city: the front door is one of nine. A house here is not a door, it is a set — the entry, the service door on the side of the garage, a side gate, a pool gate that has to latch itself, a cellar, a safe, the room over the garage, a mail block at the road and, on the hill streets, a gate standing before the driveway even begins. Every one of them has a key, and the keys have scattered. The gardener has the yard gate. The cleaner has the entry. Two contractors from the last remodel still hold whatever they were handed in 2019 and never gave back. Nobody in the house can say how many copies exist, which is why the same two calls come in week after week: open the door that stopped me today, and bring all of this onto one key.
The doors also fail in a predictable order. The gate latch goes first, because a gate nobody walks through from September to June dries out until the key turns and moves nothing. Then the garage service door, carrying the cheapest lock on the property and standing as the second way into the house. Then the entry itself, usually on a seventies frame settled far enough that the bolt catches the edge of its plate instead of dropping through. So nobody here opens a call by asking what make of lock is on the door. The two things worth knowing are which of the nine it is, and how long since a key last went into it.
Every Door on the Property
Four commitments written for a house with nine ways into it. Two of them are numbers and two are rules, and all four are spoken while you are still on the phone — never discovered later, on a driveway, with a technician already unpacking.
- Castlewood, Ruby Hill and the streets climbing south — large lots, long driveways, a gate before the house
- the hill streets
- Val Vista, Mission Park and the flat streets west of Main — houses from the sixties and seventies, one household per door
- the tracts
- Main Street and the blocks around it — small buildings with shared street doors and offices above shops
- downtown and the condos
The same sheet on every street, with the drive folded in
Every street in Pleasanton is charged from the same sheet, and $89 of whatever it says is the drive, folded in rather than tacked on. House lockout $134–$255. Car lockout $112–$208. Business lockout $148–$276. Putting a forced door back together $181–$472. Rekeying works out at $34–$52 a cylinder, the second and third cheaper than the first because nobody drives out twice. New hardware $132–$352; a keypad or app lock $208–$515; a safe opened in the room it stands in $216–$570. On the commercial sheet, exit devices are $324–$836 a door and shop front hardware $166–$505 an opening; master keying and access control get no number until somebody has walked the doors with a notebook. Vehicles: $164–$446 for a car key, $99–$208 to pair a remote, $194–$487 for an ignition, $132–$308 for motorcycle keys. Evenings from 8pm add $52 and nights past midnight add $94, both inside the total before you agree to it, while Saturdays, Sundays and holidays add nothing whatsoever. Labor is warranted 90 days and it says so on the invoice.
Three things are deliberately missing from the sheet: anything to do with a garage door's springs, its cables, its panels or the motor that lifts it, which is a separate trade; remotes and gate lists for a community, which the association controls; and any ruling on which resident may order work on a door shared by many households, which gets settled on the call between you and whoever runs that door.
Since 2012, with nobody between your call and the van
Amador Lock & Key has worked Pleasanton since 2012 under the one name and the one phone number. It is not a franchise, it rents no national brand, and it does not sell your address on. That last trade is the one the warning about midnight search results describes: a call center far from this valley writes the job down, auctions it to whichever subcontractor grabs it, and the price you hear first is not the price you pay.
The 925 number rings this shop, and somebody picks it up at any hour. Curt Lindahl owns the business and stands behind every job on its invoices, including the ones another technician on the payroll drives out to; the text that goes out before the van leaves says who is coming and when. The ninety days on the labor are the business's promise, printed under its own name.
Where we work
Pleasanton and the Tri-Valley, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
Asked about Amador itself, not the doors
Is Amador a franchise, or a call center that hands the job to somebody else?+
Neither. Amador Lock & Key is one independent Pleasanton business: the 925 number rings the shop, the technician who drives out is on its payroll, and your address stays with it. A lot of what fills the screen when you search for a locksmith at night is a dispatch operation in another state that sells each call to the first subcontractor who takes it. That arrangement is why a small figure on the phone so often turns into a large one at the door, and it is the reason this shop was set up the other way.
How long has the shop worked Pleasanton, and who owns it?+
Since 2012. Curt Lindahl owns it and has 18 years on Amador Valley doors, so he had been working on locks in this valley for several years before the shop carried its name. In all that time the calls have come from the same places: entries, garage service doors, side gates and pool gates, cellars, safes left behind by the last owner, shop doors on Main and cars in the Stoneridge lot.
Can I bring a key or a cylinder to you instead of having someone come out?+
There is no counter to bring it to, on purpose. What fails here is usually fixed in place, a gate latch, a cellar door, a safe in a closet, so the key machine, cylinder stock and pinning kit travel in the van instead. It starts the day a few doors off Main, and a key cut on the visit gets tried in the lock before anyone leaves, rather than on a second trip.
How do I know the person at my gate was sent by Amador?+
Before the van moves you get a text naming the technician and a window based on where the van actually is. Compare that name with the person in front of you; if they do not match, do not open anything and ring the shop back. It works in the other direction too: before a lock is touched, you will be asked for photo ID carrying the address, or ID plus a lease, a tax bill or a closing statement.
Is there anything the shop will not take on, even if asked?+
Three things, and you hear them on the call rather than in the driveway. Garage door springs, cables, panels and openers belong to a separate trade. Remotes and the entry list for a community gate are the association's to issue. And on a door several households share, the shop does not decide which resident may order work; that gets settled between you and whoever runs the door before a van is sent.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Name the door, and say how long since anyone used it
Pleasanton, whatever the hour, every day of the year. An entry in the tracts, a seized gate latch on a hill street, a pool gate, a safe left behind by the last owners, a shop door on Main, a car sitting in the Stoneridge lot — that is what decides the work, and the work decides the figure. You get that figure on this call with the $89 drive and the clock already inside it, and it is the figure on the invoice. Ninety days on the labor, in writing. The van is a few doors off Main.