When I was a young Treasury agent, I attended a school in Washington, D.C., to learn several "technical investigative aids." One skill was lock picking. Our instructor was an executive from a major lock manufacturer, who had been picking locks for decades. I'll call him Ernie.
Ernie like to tell stories about lock picking jobs he had done over the years. Some things were done just for fun. Once, he said, he had picked the lock of the soft-drink vending machine which stood outside his office. He took out all the coins, counted them, and replaced the amount collected with $1, $5, and $10 bills. When the vending machine guy came to service the machine, my friend and his colleagues watched from a distance. "The look on that guy's face when he pulled out all that paper money was one of total confusion. He kept looking in the coin box and back to the wad of bills in his hand. It was so much fun."
When I was in the intelligence business and lived in Germany, we had storage lockers in the basement of our apartment building. One day I noticed that one of the lockers had a very expensive, government issue, combination padlock on its hasp. It was the kind of lock used to lock up Top Secret stuff. All such locks came set with a "factory combination." Then, once the lock was opened and you turned the special key in the slot, you could put your own combination on it for security applications.
On a hunch, I tried the factory combination on the padlock. It opened! I took some steel washers out of my toolbox and slipped them over the shackle of the lock - and closed the lock. I would have loved to have been there when Mr. Security came to open his locker and found the washers on his Top Secret combination lock.
After I left the government, I lived in the Dallas area. I was trying to establish myself as a security expert and wrote a small book called "The Home Security Manual" - under a pen name. It seemed like the Dallas Police could use the book in their Crime Prevention program. So, I made an appointment with Capt. Billy Prince at Crime Prevention. In my briefcase was a copy of my book, and about a dozen padlocks.
As I pitched the book to Billy, I casually used my hand-made lock picks to open each padlock in turn. Each one took about five seconds, since I had some of finest training one could get. I could see Billy's eyes get bigger and bigger as the locks dropped on the desk - open.
Billy liked the book, but said that his department had no money to purchase them. He suggested that I get a large local bank to buy them and donate the books to the police department. I did just that. The bank put their logo and ads on the book. A photo was in the Dallas newspaper of the bank PR guy presenting the security manual to the Chief of Police.
That little book, which I wrote on a typewriter I bought on a credit card, and the lock-picking demo, launched my move into security work in Dallas. I gave many lectures to citizen groups, in connection with the police Crime Prevention program, where I had a mock door and several type of locks. Eventually, I got into security sales and consulting and worked on security at some of the biggest skyscrapers in Dallas. But, I have always thought that the thing that set me apart from the beginning was that little dog-and-pony-show of picking the locks and dumping them on Billy Prince's desk.
Billy Prince went on to become the Chief of Police. I moved on to writing and publishing. But I will never forget the thump of those opened padlocks hitting the desk - nor will Billy. We have talked about it at lunch several times over the intervening years.
Richard Rhodes
08/03/98