The key to a gratifying career for Denny Early was locks.

“I have been a locksmith my whole life,” said the 64-year-old.

His father, Edward, was a locksmith at Allan and Co., a shop on Smithfield Street that opened in 1937. In August 1948, he was featured in the Pittsburgh newspapers after he opened a locked safe for police in just 3 minutes.

“I would go with my dad after school to his shop from the time I was 10,” Mr. Early said.

He began to work in the shop officially at 16. “I used to have customers two rows deep waiting to have keys cut, but not anymore,” he said.

While the traditional lock and key is a long way from being obsolete, it is getting real competition from smart locks, card readers and other technology that has replaced the old tumblers. Access key cards used in hotels, hospitals and other businesses can control entry and keep a record, he noted.

“Retina scans, facial recognition and card swiping is where we are now,” he said. “You can’t do that with a key.”

As for hacking, he says it’s possible but unlikely since there are so many different kinds of formats used by access readers.

 “Sometimes the information is stored on the card and sometimes on the reader pad,” he said.  “The thing with keys is you can’t tell who was the last person to use it, but with a card you know.”

After he sold his father’s company, Mr. Early was hired by the buyer, Safe Masters, and went to work in Washington, D.C.

“They bought me as well, and made me VP of purchasing,” he laughed.  “We did a lot of government work, but I can’t talk about that.”

He can talk about his next move, which was to start another company, National Hardware Installers.  He wanted to get back to hands-on work and choosing the jobs he wanted to do.

“We were doing doors in prisons and federal buildings all around the country,” he recalled. 

Once the housing bubble burst, work started to drop off, so he took a job at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium as a carpenter. “Children’s Hospital called while I was working at the zoo and asked me to hang 4,000 doors.”  

He then started yet another company, Architectural Hardware Installers.

“I like to work,” he admitted.  “As a locksmith you have to be creative and think out of the box sometimes.”

He once was called by a man who was locked out of his Mercedes.

“The passenger side is hydraulic linkage and the driver’s side is mechanical and someone had tried to open it using a slim jim,” he said. “Plus the battery was dead so nothing was working.”

He ended up calling a glass company and had the windshield removed to get into the car that way.  

“The most common reason people call a locksmith isn’t because they are locked out. It is because the door doesn’t shut anymore and the lock won’t catch,” Mr. Early said.

He’s also gotten pretty good at opening safes. “Most times it’s just that people forget the combination.”

He drills holes in the top and pours water into the safe so that the money or papers inside do not catch fire as he burns off the top of the safe. “Then we dry off the money in the microwave.”

Currently, he works for his nephew, Anthony DeMino, who owns Allegheny Safe & Lock in Cranberry. It’s the largest locally owned access control card reader company in the Pittsburgh area. Of the eight service people, he is the only one who carries a pick set. Despite what you see in the movies, lock pickers work by feel rather than by sound, he said.

“I am enjoying myself,” said Mr. Early. “I love working on old locks.”  

Patricia Sheridan: psheridan@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2613, Twitter: @pasheridan.

First Published: June 16, 2017, 2:05 p.m.