About
No shop, no franchise, nobody taking a cut of your address. Just the van that answers.
A mobile locksmith on San Rafael doors since 2012, stocked for what this county actually built: mortise cases for Gerstle Park, sliding-door locks for the Terra Linda Eichlers, gate cylinders for the Dominican driveways, aluminum deadlatches for Fourth Street. Calls answered at any hour on (628) 251-8459.
4.9 / 5· 228 reviews from San Rafael & the Marin towns beside it
2012
On San Rafael doors since
24/7
Calls answered
90 days
On the workmanship
Owner, still on the lead van
I started this business in 2012 after five years on Marin doors for other people, and most days I still drive the lead van, from Gerstle Park porches up to the gates at the top of Lucas Valley.
What I answer for personally is the address you give us. It stays inside this business, and whoever phones you from your gate works for me.
Aram Petrossian
Owner · 19 years in Marin · with Marin Lock & Key since 2012
One van, one owner, nobody in between
Marin Lock & Key has been taking San Rafael calls since 2012, out of a van rather than from behind a counter, because the cylinder that needs work is bolted to a door on Mission Avenue or sitting in a car two levels down in a Fourth Street garage, and it is not going to come to us. The county stands in the name because that is how people here answer the question of where they live, and the mark is Mount Tamalpais, in view from most of the streets the van covers in a day. Aram Petrossian, who owns the business and still runs the lead van, had five years on Marin doors behind him before the first invoice went out under this name.
Some of it is easier to state as negatives. No franchise agreement above this business, no dealership behind it, no loyalty owed to a lock maker or a car brand, and no arrangement under which your address gets written down and handed along to whichever van bids for it. One number, one dispatch board, and the person who knocks is paid by the same business that named your figure on the phone.
Stock chosen for the doors this county built
San Rafael is a long, narrow city holding four or five building eras at once, and the shelves in the van are loaded for that. Mortise cases, cylinders and period strikes for the 1900s and 1920s houses in Gerstle Park and around Mission Avenue. Sliding-door locks and levers for the Eichlers and ranch houses of Terra Linda and Marinwood. Keypad and app locks for guest houses, the condos at Loch Lomond and the rentals in the Canal. Gate cylinders and keypad modules for the long driveways of Dominican and Lucas Valley. Aluminum deadlatches, hookbolts and closers for the glass doors on Fourth Street, alongside strike plates, long screws and jamb armor, exit devices, readers, and blanks with the programmers to match for most cars on the road, hybrids and EVs included.
Loading all of that at once is why most visits end with the door working rather than with a part on order and something propped shut until morning. It counts double near the water: salt air off the Marina and the Canal seizes cylinders that would have had another decade in them three miles inland, and the replacement is usually already on board.
Named Before the Van Leaves
The full figure is named on the call. The van leaves the yard afterward. Four parts, each one kept. Ninety days on the workmanship, on the receipt.
- Margaret W., Gerstle Park
- $148
- Ursula J., Dominican
- $259
- Ainsley T., Downtown & Fourth Street
- $154
A 1915 front door closed behind her while she watered the porch ferns. Opened without a mark on the brass.
A hillside rental where nobody could say how many keys existed. Five cylinders brought onto one.
Keys on the passenger seat in the garage off Fourth Street, a quarter to eleven at night.
From the call to the emailed receipt
You have the full figure before the call ends. It comes off the published list, the $89 service call is counted inside it instead of waiting at the bottom of the invoice, and an arrival between 8pm and midnight adds $55 while one between midnight and 7am adds $90, both spoken inside the total rather than produced at the door. Master keying and access control are priced differently: those get walked, counted and quoted in writing, because a guess at a door count is how a job turns into an argument.
Before the van moves, a text goes out carrying the technician's name and a thirty-minute window. At your gate the technician calls rather than leaning on the intercom or waking the house, checks an ID against the address or a registration against the plate, and then picks, decodes or bypasses the lock. A drill appears only after you have heard what it would replace and what that costs, and saying yes to it does not move the figure. Payment is card or tap once the door closes properly, the itemized receipt reaches your inbox while the van is still in the driveway, and ninety days on the workmanship is printed on it.
The work we talk people out of
A deadbolt that will not throw is usually a frame that has shifted, not a cylinder that has died, and saying so turns a hardware sale into a strike plate moved an eighth of an inch and two longer screws. A house with five keys nobody can account for is a rekey, not five new locks. An original mortise case in Gerstle Park can very often be cleaned, re-sprung and rekeyed, with the brass plate and the glass knob left where the builder set them. Every one of those conversations costs us the larger invoice, which is rather the point of having them.
Some calls end in a no. On a short list of makes, key programming is tied to a dealer tool, and that belongs on the phone rather than in your driveway. Safes with relocking devices, restricted keys cut only against a registered card, and anything where the honest route runs through the manufacturer are named for what they are before anyone is sent. Turning a job down costs a day's work; it costs less than a van parked outside a door it was never going to open.
Where we work
San Rafael & the Marin towns beside it, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
Questions about the business itself
Is this an independent locksmith, or a booking service?+
Independent, and Marin is the whole of it. Dialing the number on this page reaches the people who own the van; no call is sold on, and no third company is sent in our place. The distinction is worth checking, because a good share of the national listings sitting above the map results are brokers: they collect the call, keep a margin and pass the address to whoever answers first, which is how a phone quote and a door price end up as two different numbers.
How long have you been working San Rafael?+
Since 2012 under this name, on the same work throughout: lockouts, rekeys, replacement hardware, storefront and gate work, safes and car keys. The owner had five years on Marin doors before that, and most of the local reflexes come from those years — the settled frames on the hillside streets, the 1910s mortise cases in Gerstle Park, the salt-seized cylinders near the water, the Eichler sliders in Terra Linda that need their own lock and not a universal one.
Is there a shop in San Rafael I can walk a lock into?+
No, and that is a choice rather than a gap. A storefront would mean rent on Fourth Street, counter hours, and a drive across town at the worst moment of your day. The van stages along 101 instead, which is why the citywide average is twenty-one minutes and Lucas Valley, at the top of its driveways, sits closer to twenty-six. Key cutting, cylinder work, rekeying and fob programming all happen where you already are, off the bench that rides in the back.
Who will be standing at my gate?+
Someone whose name you were given in writing beforehand. The text sent before the van leaves the yard carries the technician's name and a thirty-minute window, and holding that text up against the person in front of you is the cheapest safety check in this trade. The call then comes from the gate rather than the intercom, so nobody in the house is woken by a stranger. If what pulls up does not match the text, you are entirely within your rights to send it away and call the number back.
Suppose the cylinder will not give. What then?+
That is a conversation you get before any tool goes near the door. Most residential deadbolts, apartment cylinders, aluminum storefront latches and car doors open with picks, decoders, bypass tools or an air wedge, and the hardware keeps working afterward. When a cylinder is high-security, already damaged, or seized by a broken key or the salt air, the technician explains what drilling would do, names the replacement part and its cost, and waits for your yes. The figure named on the call stays where it was either way.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
One call, one full figure, the same figure on the receipt
Calls answered 24/7 across San Rafael and the Marin towns beside it. The $89 service call, the labor, the parts and the drive up the hill are inside the figure named on the call, and the receipt repeats it.