safecracker at large

Ken Dunckel Owner, Safecracker 415-203-7298 kendunckel@aol.com Serving the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California Last Friday (August 26) a lady named Annette Lassen called and introduced herself as a Segment Producer for LMNO, a television production company. She dropped the Oprah Winfrey Network name during the first sentence or two, saying her company wanted to hire me to open the "mystery safe" found during demolition work at a former casino at Lake Tahoe, and that her company wanted to do some video of the work. She sketched the circumstances: Former casino owner killed by a car bomb in 1968, murder not solved, suspected organized crime involvement (ya think?), locked safe found behind a wall in the old casino building owned by the victim. Supposedly there had been several unsuccessful tries at opening the safe before Annette called me, but my thinking is that it only proved they hadn't been willing to hire a real safe tech. The thinking was that...

Seems like I'm hearing it more lately . . . "you want more to open it than I paid for it!" Mostly this comes from people who bought their (now broken or forgotten combination) "safe" at some big-box store. Often enough, they're right. No apologies from this quarter, however. Some companies currently making and selling what pass for safes have their products made in other countries where the labor costs are very low in comparison to what Americans have to earn to keep their families fed. Couple that with the ferocious competition among safe makers to sell products in quantity. The only effective way to do it is by selling cheaper. It becomes the race to the bottom, in both price and quality. Case In Point: Last week I was hired by a safe maker to repair a gun safe. The owner bought it at a discount house, but discovered a problem with it as soon as he tried to use it. He found his way to the safe maker's help line. A company rep told him he thought h...

How do I even know that the person who hires me to open a safe actually owns it? This is most worrisome when it involves residential calls I get at night. For Instance: A caller from a residence needs to have a safe in a home opened, and right away. I never know if the caller actually owns the safe or if Aunt Mary's crackhead nephew is taking advantage of the fact that Aunt Mary is traveling, or in the hospital, or whatever. After all, it's work, and we all need to work. And work of the of the service-to-your door genre commands higher fees in almost any night, weekend, or holiday situation. So of course I'm interested. Typically I ask a lot more questions of residential safe owners on night work than I might in the daytime: What's the matter with it? Do you know the combination numbers? Is it one that you open on a regular basis? When was the last time it opened successfully? Are you sure you're entering the combination correctly? What is the maker...

There was a pause in communications after my semi-decline to the producer, then he detailed a lady to contact me as a follow-up. She was real nice. I reaffirmed my unwillingness to be a subject, then gave her the names of a couple of industry people I know who have already participated in such productions. If they like what she tells them one or both of them might go for it. You might be seeing them in the future if these producers can put something watchable together. Do you want some real safe and vault entertainment? A friend of mine designs and builds safes. A while ago he resurrected an old concept, (a bolt-together, assemble-on-site high security safe) improving it hugely, to the point of patentability, and went to market. That's not the entertainment part, though. Go to citysafe.com and click on the part about Modul-X and watch the video of the safe getting attacked with all manner of very potent military weaponry at a Russian military base. This is real stuff yo...

It's been a while since my last post. Other stuff has been eating the time. The safe work has been same as ever, from spotty to busy, with no clue as to why it goes one way or another, but that's entertainment, I guess. The latest news of note is that last week a man called me from somewhere in the East, introduced himself as a producer, then asked if I would be interested in being in a reality TV show. It went to voicemail, where every call from unfamiliar out of state numbers goes --- too many human and robot phone solicitors these days. After I heard his message, I texted back, thanked him for asking (always flattering to be asked), then told him he probably wasn't interested in paying my rates, but offered to put him in touch with other industry people who might be more amenable. Mentioning "my rates" usually throws cold water on things like this. I learned earlier; other independent producers have contacted me in the past with grandiose plans...

The best (and sometimes the worst) part of safe work is that onlookers usually don't know how hard the safe tech is struggling. It all evens out, sort of . . . A couple of weeks ago I figuratively had my head handed to me on a job. The job was a good distance out of town, and it was to open a safe I'm very familiar with. So I had no excuse for what happened. The problem was that I tried to use a shortcut technique that I've been successful with before. Not to bore with details, but the technique is one that can reduce the opening and repairing time for a specific ATM safe from well over to two hours on average to maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Anyway, my cute and fast technique backfired to cause a technical problem that kept me on the job for nearly eight hours. That's the breaks. The good part (I guess) was that the man who hired me for the job was still impressed by my performance, even though this was not a brag-worthy piece of work. In fact, the only good thing I...

A man called about a problem with one of his safes. The combination worked fine. He told me that after he unlocked the combination the next step was to turn the handle that controls the door bolts and the safe would be open. The first part of the problem was that after he unlocked the combination, the handle that controlled the bolts wouldn’t turn. After multiple unsuccessful attempts to open the safe as he normally would, he decided to help the handle turn. With a large hammer. The handle that wouldn’t turn was now in his hand, with the shaft that connected it to the bolts inside door sheared off below the surface of the door. The owner wanted to know how much I would charge to open the safe. He also said he wanted it done as soon as possible. After asking some questions I had a good idea of the safe’s make and burglary rating. The owner was a jeweler. When I hear “jeweler,” I have a better idea of the safe’s rating. Insurance companies stipulate minimum acceptable alarm and s...