About
The door most people use here is down beside the garage.
Hageman has worked Daly City from a van since 2015, with no counter anyone can walk up to. Most calls start at the narrow door beside a Westlake roll-up, opened twice a day since 1952; others at a downstairs unit whose tenant changed on Saturday, a Palisades cylinder after ten winters of salt, or a Mission Street shop door pushed out of line by moving ground. Coastal-grade hardware and a key machine are on board, and the job is finished before the van leaves.
4.9 / 5· 214 reviews from Daly City and the north Peninsula
2015
Daly City calls since
24/7
Someone is awake
90 days
Written on the receipt
From the garage-level door
Most people in this city come home through the garage, so the narrow door next to the roll-up is the one I care about most. Salt air off the ocean reaches its keyway long before age does, and I fit hardware meant for that.
When the ground has pushed a strike out of line, I set it right as part of the visit and stand behind that fix for ninety days, no differently from a rekey.
Elias Ferrer
Owner · 19 years on the hill · with Hageman since 2015
The phone, the van, and nobody in between
Hageman Lock Works has been taking Daly City calls since 2015, and there has never been a counter to walk up to. The lock in question is bolted to a garage service door on a Westlake street, hung on a shop front at the top of Mission Street, or sitting in a car parked on a 25-foot frontage in the fog, and not one of those is going to travel. So the bench travels instead: the van stages near the Westlake center on John Daly Boulevard and moves toward whoever called, at any hour of any day.
Four things worth stating flatly, because the first page of search results for this city is full of businesses that are none of them. This is not a franchise. It holds no dealership and answers to no lock maker and no car brand. It is not a dispatch desk in another state wearing a local area code. And your address is never auctioned off to whichever van bids for it — the 650 number rings here, the person who knocks is paid by the name printed at the top of your receipt, and the figure agreed on the phone is the figure on that receipt.
Loaded for the door at the pavement
This city is a handful of house plans repeated thousands of times, so the shelves on board are loaded for what those plans actually put on a door. Knob sets and deadbolts sized to the bores in the 1948 to 1962 houses, where the lower door is often still running on a latch button with nothing above it. Stainless BHMA 630 cylinders and bolts for streets inside a mile of open water, instead of the satin chrome BHMA 626 that is rated for interior use and sold for outside doors anyway. Long strikes, three-inch screws and jamb reinforcement for leaves that have moved on ground running from sea level to about 780 feet. Keypad deadbolts, with a cutting machine aboard so the override key leaves as metal rather than a blank. Aluminum deadlatches, hookbolts and exit devices for Mission Street and the centers at Westlake and Serramonte. Blanks, transponders and programmers for what stands at the curb and in the 2,068 spaces at Daly City BART.
Hauling every one of those categories at once costs shelf space, and it buys the thing people actually care about: the visit ends on the first trip rather than with a door propped shut and a part on order. What the van deliberately does not carry is anything belonging to the roll-up itself — springs, cables, panels, opener motors. In a city where nearly every house has a garage door at the sidewalk, that limit gets named in the first minute of the call and not after somebody has made the drive.
The Door at the Pavement
Four things that hold the same way on a garage door in Westlake, a hallway door in Serramonte, a shop front on Mission Street and a converted garage with its own tenants. Ninety days on the labor, written on the receipt instead of implied.
- Westlake — about 1,350 acres bought by one builder, near enough 11,000 houses across two counties on a single plan
- 1948–62
- Serramonte — the Gellert tract, a later plan on the wider ground east of the hill
- from 1963
- Vista Grande and Top of the Hill — the older part of the city, smaller lots, shops and flats on the same block
- before 1940
Booking it, waiting for it, paying for it
Your number is settled while you are still holding the phone. It comes off the published list, the $89 call-out is folded inside it rather than waiting at the bottom of the invoice, and the clock is counted in the same breath: $50 on an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $90 between midnight and 7am. A house lockout quoted at $145 in the afternoon is $195 at ten at night, and both of those still sit inside the published $129 to $239. Master key systems and access control are the single exception, because a door count guessed down a phone line becomes an argument later: somebody walks the building and writes down every door before a price is spoken.
Once it is booked, a text carries the technician name and a window drawn from where the van actually is — about 12 minutes into Westlake, 18 as the citywide average, 26 out toward Geneva Avenue at Bayshore, and longer over the ridge to Pacifica, with the longer figure said rather than hidden. At the address, ID is matched to the address, or a license, registration and plate are read against each other at a car, before a case is opened. The leaf, the hinges and the strike are brought back into line first, then the lock goes on, and you work the key yourself before anything is packed away. Card or tap at the door, an itemized receipt in your email, ninety days on the labor written on it.
Saying the cheap thing, and saying no
A fair share of these calls end with less work than the caller expected to buy. A door that will not lock without a shove has usually lost its alignment rather than its cylinder: the ground shifted, the slab swelled in the damp, and the answer is a strike moved, a mortise recut and two long screws driven into framing, which is part of the visit instead of a line added on top of it. A house carrying five keys that each open one thing wants a rekey at $29 to $46 per cylinder, not five new locks. And on a split-level the honest order of work is almost always the low door first: if one lock is being replaced this year it is the one at the pavement doing five times the duty, not the barely used one at the top of the outside steps.
Other work gets declined before anybody drives. Garage door springs, cables, panels and opener motors are a different trade and are called that on the phone. A short list of makes and model years locks key programming behind a dealer-only tool, and that belongs at the start of a call rather than at the end of one. Safes fitted with a relocker, and any job where the manufacturer is genuinely the cheaper road, get named for what they are as well. The refusals cost money. They are also why the phone rings a second time.
Where we work
Daly City and the north Peninsula, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
What callers ask before they ask the price
Is this an independent locksmith, or a desk that sends somebody out?+
Independent, with Daly City and the towns right around it as the whole territory. The 650 number on this site rings the business itself, the technician sent to you is paid by it, and nothing about your call is passed on to a third van. It matters because a good part of what sits above the map results is a dispatch desk several states away: it buys the ad, advertises a figure in the twenties, takes your address and hands the job to whoever answers, which is exactly why the number at the start of those calls and the number at the end have so little to do with each other.
How long has the business been working this city?+
Since 2015. Elias Ferrer owns it, still runs calls on the van, and has nineteen years on the hill behind him — more years in the trade than the company has on the sign, which is the useful part. The local patterns have been seen often enough to be named before the van arrives: a stiff key within a mile of the water is chloride in the keyway rather than a worn key, a bolt that misses its hole on this slope is a strike job rather than a lock job, and a sixty-year-old cylinder at the top of the outside steps is usually still sweet while its twin at the pavement is finished.
Is there a shop where I can hand a lock over the counter?+
No, and that is a decision rather than something missing. A storefront means rent, posted hours and a drive across town at the worst moment of your day, and the lock you want looked at is bolted to a door regardless. The van stages near the Westlake center instead and drives toward the address: roughly 12 minutes into Westlake, 18 averaged across the eight neighborhoods, 26 out to Bayshore. Key cutting, repinning, cylinder work and fob programming all happen at your curb, off the bench that rides on board, inside the same visit that started the call.
Who is going to be standing at the door, and how do I know it is them?+
Someone whose name was on your phone first. Before the van moves, a text goes out naming the technician and the window it should land in. Standing that name beside the face at your door costs nothing and is the single sharpest check this trade hands you. The check runs the other way too, before any case is opened: ID against the address at a house, or a license, registration and plate agreeing with one another at a car. If what pulls up does not match what you were sent, you owe nobody an explanation — send it off and call the 650 number back.
What if the lock cannot be opened without wrecking it?+
You hear that before a tool touches it. Garage service doors, house deadbolts, storefront latches and car doors nearly always come open with picks, shims and bypass tools and keep working afterward. When a plug is seized — on this side of the hill that is usually salt rather than age — or the cylinder is already broken inside, the technician stops and says what drilling costs in hardware, what grade and finish the replacement would be, and what else is worth trying, then waits for your answer. Whatever you decide, the number you were given on the phone is the number that holds.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say which door you are standing at and the call gets short
Daly City and the north Peninsula, every hour of the day. The door decides the work and the work decides the number, so the figure comes back on the call with the $89 call-out and the hour already inside it, and it is the figure on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.