The call came in at 3:07 PM
Marco was the name on the phone. He owns a small mixed-use building off Woodman Avenue in Arleta, just south of Osborne, the kind of place with a roll-up door in the back and a side office that opens onto the alley. His tenant — a guy who’d been running a small auto upholstery operation for almost four years — had moved out two days earlier. Cleared the space, dropped off two keys at Marco’s house, and that was that.
Except Marco had a problem. He didn’t know how many keys actually existed.
“Four years he was here,” Marco told our dispatcher. “He had employees come and go. Family members helping out on weekends. I have no idea who has a copy of what. I’ve got a new tenant signing the lease Monday morning and I’m not handing over a building I can’t control.”
Smart guy. That’s exactly the right instinct.
Why rekeying beats replacing — for most situations
When Marco first called, he asked if he needed to buy all new locks. That’s the assumption a lot of property owners make, and honestly, sometimes it’s the right answer. But for a clean tenant turnover where the existing hardware is in good shape, rekeying is usually the smarter move.
Rekeying means we pull the cylinder out of each lock, swap the internal pins to a new combination, and cut fresh keys to match. The lock itself stays. The door stays. The strike plate, the deadbolt body, all of it stays. What changes is the key pattern — so every old key, no matter how many copies are out there, becomes useless the moment we’re done.
For Marco’s building, the locks were solid commercial-grade Schlage cylinders that the previous owner had installed maybe six years back. No reason to rip them out. We told him on the phone we’d handle it as a rekey job, give him a fresh master key system, and have him ready before sunset.
On site by 3:45
From our last call out near Branford Park, the drive over to Marco’s building was about fifteen minutes. Friday traffic on Woodman wasn’t bad yet — the school pickup wave from Beachy Avenue Elementary had already cleared out, and the Metrolink crowd at the Sun Valley station wouldn’t start until closer to five.
The building had five locks total that mattered:
- Front office door — a Schlage B60 deadbolt and a knob lock
- Roll-up door side entry — a heavy-duty mortise lock
- Back alley door — deadbolt only
- Interior storage room — original cylinder, lower-grade
Marco wanted everything on one master key for himself, with the new tenant getting a separate key that opened the front and back but not the interior storage (he wanted to keep that for building maintenance access). That’s a standard request and a master key system handles it cleanly.
The interior storage cylinder was the one issue
Our tech, Andrei, popped the cylinder on the storage room and immediately flagged it. The pins were worn, two of them were starting to mushroom from years of use, and the keyway was sloppy. We could rekey it, but it wouldn’t hold a tight pin pattern for long. We showed Marco, and he agreed — we swapped that one cylinder out for a new commercial-grade replacement at cost. Five minutes of extra work, and now all five locks were keyed to the same system, all fresh, all clean.
Done by 5:20, six keys cut
Marco got his master key, plus two duplicates for himself. The new tenant would get two keys on Monday that worked the exterior doors. We labeled everything, walked him through the master system on paper so he’d know which key did what, and gave him a small key control log to track who gets what going forward.
Total time on site: about an hour and a half. He had his building back before the weekend.
A few things worth knowing if you own commercial property in Arleta
Don’t wait until the new tenant is at the door
Marco called us with three days of buffer. That’s good. The worst version of this call is the one we get Monday morning at 8 AM with a new tenant standing outside. We’ll still show up, but you’re stressed and the new tenant is watching. Plan the rekey for the week before turnover.
Ask about a master key system even if you only have one building
If you have multiple doors on a property, having them keyed alike (or on a real master system) saves you a key ring full of clutter. A lot of small commercial owners don’t realize this is an option for the same price as separate rekeys.
Think about the safe, too
Marco mentioned the previous tenant had left a small floor safe bolted in the back. We don’t touch tenant property, but we did remind him that if he ever wants his own safe for the office — for petty cash, documents, spare keys — we also handle . He took the card.
Keep a key log from day one
The reason Marco didn’t know how many keys existed is that nobody tracked them. A simple notebook with “key #1 — Marco, key #2 — tenant, key #3 — spare in office drawer” would have saved him this whole call. We give every commercial client a key control sheet now. Use it.
If you own or manage a commercial space in Arleta and you’ve got a turnover coming up, or you just realized you have no idea who has keys to your building, give us a ring at (818) 398-9391. We cover the full neighborhood and the rest of the valley — you can see everything we do on our Arleta locksmith services page. Marco’s job took ninety minutes. Yours probably will too.
