The Garage Door

Security is an illusion

He forgot his keys. There we were, sitting in the car, looking at a locked house and garage door. Our driveway at the Plano Texas house was in the back and it led up to the two-car garage. But my conscientious Dad that secured the house every time we left had locked it. Except this time I was sure that he had done himself in.

He was his own worst enemy.

Once he discovered that he had no house keys on him, he walked up to the garage door, removed something from his shirt pocket, bent down just slightly, and inserted something into garage door lock. About 8 seconds later, the handle turned and the garage door slid up at his fingertips. I was dumbfounded. How did he open the garage without a key? He finally told me.
He habitually carried a open ended leather comb case with a metal comb in his shirt pocket. But next to the metal comb was two lock picks and a tension bar. The metal comb kept the picks from getting bent and held the picks in the case. Turns out that he could open most American locks with just two types of picks and a tension bar. I asked how he picked the lock so fast. He said that the U.S. Treasury had trained him as an ATF agent to pick locks and that the Agency gave him even further training. He had picked thousands of locks over the years and many different types.

It was as natural to him to pick a lock as it was for me to turn a doorknob and walk in a room. And I had seen many movies and TV shows by that time that showed spies and criminals picking locks by crouching down and looking into the keyway as they picked. I asked why he did not do that crouching method. He said that he was trained to walk up to a door and pick it in the same amount of time and appearance as if he had a key. He could feel the pins in the keyway with the pick and manipulate them at will. Most good locksmiths can pick locks but not in such an innocuous manner. When he was in the field, he did not want to give even the hint that he was picking a lock, because he would have drawn unnecessary attention to himself.

I asked the next logical question, were the lock picks illegal to own for a private citizen that was not a locksmith? His answer was yes, but then he said how often would a police officer search his comb case since he had a clean criminal history and would not give the officer any reason to search him. Besides, his law degree from the University of Minnesota came in handy when debating legal issues with law enforcement officers.