About
The van is loaded for the doors this city actually has.
No shop and no counter: one van kept near Middlefield Road since 2013, with mortise springs, atrium latches and safe change keys on the shelves behind the seats, and calls answered on a Sunday night as readily as a Tuesday noon across Palo Alto, Stanford & the towns beside them.
4.9 / 5· 176 reviews from Palo Alto, Stanford & the towns beside them
2013
On Palo Alto doors since
24/7
Line picked up
90 days
Workmanship covered
The owner, on sliders and safes
Twenty-four years on Peninsula doors taught me this city built only a handful of kinds, and since 2013 one van has been loaded for all of them: Professorville mortise sets, Eichler atrium sliders, a safe bolted through a closet floor.
On a safe, my aim is a door that swings open and then closes properly again, never a hole in its side. Original hardware stays and gets rekeyed wherever the mechanism lets it.
Everett Nakashima
Owner · 24 years on Peninsula doors · on the Tall Tree Lock & Safe van since 2013
The name on the van is the name on the receipt
Tall Tree Lock & Safe has worked Palo Alto and Stanford out of a van since 2013, and the van is the entire premises. A cylinder is bolted into a door on Waverley Street, a slider hangs in a Greenmeadow atrium, a safe is anchored through a closet floor in Crescent Park — not one of those travels to a counter, so the bench travels to them instead. The name is borrowed from the city itself: Palo Alto is the tall tree, the old redwood standing over San Francisquito Creek, and the mark is that tree set inside a ring.
Said plainly, here is what this business is not. It holds no franchise agreement, it is nobody's dealer for a lock line or a car brand, and it does not take your street address and auction it to whichever van bids first. One 650 line rings here, the same dispatch answers it at two in the afternoon and two in the morning, and the technician who knocks draws pay from the name printed at the top of your receipt.
Loaded for Eichler sliders, mortise sets and safe dials
The van sits in Midtown, a few blocks off Middlefield Road, stocked for the handful of door types this city actually built. Mortise cases, cylinders, spring sets and period strikes for the 1910s houses of Professorville and Old Palo Alto. Sliding-door and atrium-door hardware for the Eichler tracts in Greenmeadow, Fairmeadow and Green Gables, where the weak point is a keeper riding in a track rather than a bolt in a jamb. Keypad and app-driven deadbolts for the College Terrace rentals and the apartments downtown, gate and garage cylinders for the deep lots in Crescent Park and Barron Park, aluminum deadlatches and hookbolts for the glass fronts on University and California Avenues, exit devices and readers for the offices and labs of Stanford Research Park, and blanks with the programmers to match for most cars on the road.
The safe kit rides with all of it: dial and keypad spares, a borescope, change keys to reset a lock once the door swings again, and the patience the work takes. Opening a safe runs $195 to $539, and the object every time is a door that opens and then keeps closing properly, not a hole cut in the side of it. The same instinct governs the rest of the shelf. Original hardware is kept and rekeyed wherever the mechanism allows, which on a Palo Alto mortise set is nearly always, because the escutcheon, the trim and eighty years of patina are half of what that door is worth and none of it comes back out of a box.
The Tall Tree Standard
Four things that hold on every job, from a Professorville porch to a lab door on Page Mill Road. Ninety days on the work, on the receipt.
- Arrival, by district
- Answered 24/7, nights and holidays
- The visit
- $89, already inside the figure
- Hardware on board
- Deadbolts, mortise parts, sliding-door locks
- Keys
- Cut and programmed at the door
- Calls
- Answered through the night and on holidays
A job, start to finish, with nothing added at the curb
Your figure is settled while you are still holding the phone, read off the published ranges: $129 to $219 for a house lockout, $27 to $45 a cylinder to rekey, $125 to $329 a door for replacement hardware, $155 to $419 for a car key, $195 to $539 to open a safe. The $89 service call sits inside that figure instead of waiting at the foot of the invoice, and the hour is quoted in the same breath — $55 more for an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $90 more between midnight and 7am. Master keying and access control are handled another way. Those doors get walked and counted before any price is spoken, because a door count guessed over the phone is a dispute with a date already on it.
On a yes, a text goes out carrying the technician's name and a window. The van reaches Old Palo Alto in roughly 16 minutes, Professorville and Stanford in 18, Downtown and the South Palo Alto Eichlers in 22, Barron Park and Menlo Park in 25; 22 minutes is the citywide average, and Palo Alto Hills honestly runs longer than anything below Foothill Expressway. At the address, ownership is checked before anything else — an ID against the address, a registration against the plate — and then the lock is picked, decoded or manipulated. A drill comes out only after you have heard what it does to that hardware and answered out loud, and answering does not move the figure. You tap a card where you stand, the itemized receipt reaches your inbox showing the same figure, and 90 days of workmanship coverage is printed on it.
The sentences that lose us money
A deadbolt that refuses to throw has usually lost its alignment rather than its parts: the slab settled on tired hinges, and the honest repair is a strike moved a sixteenth of an inch and two three-inch screws driven to the stud, which is a much smaller invoice than the lockset somebody hoped to sell you. Five mismatched keys in one house is a rekey, not five replacements. An Eichler slider that fights back generally wants rollers, a cleaned track and a fresh keeper, and the door stays exactly where the builder hung it. A safe dial that drifts is more often a wheel pack wanting service than a lock wanting replacement.
Other work gets refused on the phone, before anyone spends a drive across town on it. A short list of makes and model years locks key programming behind a dealer tool, and hearing that from us costs you a minute while hearing it at the curb costs you a trip. Safes fitted with a glass relocker, high-security lines whose blanks are cut only against a card the owner registered, and any job where the manufacturer is genuinely the cheaper road all get named for what they are. Sending a job away costs this business one invoice and saves the customer two.
Where we work
Palo Alto, Stanford & the towns beside them, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
Questions about the company, not the price list
Is Tall Tree Lock & Safe its own company, or a booking service?+
Its own, and Palo Alto is the whole beat. The 650 number on this site rings this business, the person dispatched to you draws pay from it, and your address is never resold to a fourth van. It is worth knowing, because a good share of what sits above the map in a search is brokerage: the call is taken, a margin is kept, the job goes to whoever bids, and that chain is exactly why a phone quote and a curbside demand so often disagree.
How long has the van been working Palo Alto?+
Since 2013, on the same trade the whole way through: lockouts, rekeys, hardware changes, storefront and lab doors, car keys and safes. Everett Nakashima, the master locksmith who stands behind the page you are reading, brings 24 years on Peninsula doors to it. What the years actually buy on a service call is recognition — the settled jambs in the older blocks, the atrium keepers in the Eichler tracts, the mortise sets in Professorville still wearing their first trim, the aluminum fronts along University Avenue.
Can I bring a lock or a safe dial somewhere?+
There is no shop, and that is a decision rather than an omission. A storefront would mean rent, fixed opening hours, and you driving across town on the worst morning of your year. The van stages in Midtown instead and moves toward whoever called, which is how the citywide average holds at 22 minutes. Key cutting, pinning, cylinder work, fob programming and safe work all happen at your curb, off the bench bolted into the van, inside the visit that began with your call.
Who is going to knock on the door?+
Somebody you can name before they get there. The dispatch text carries the technician's name and the arrival window, and matching that name against whoever is standing on your porch takes five seconds and is worth more than any badge. If the two do not agree, send them off without apologizing and call the 650 number back.
And if the lock will not open without damage?+
You hear about it before a tool is committed. House deadbolts, apartment cylinders, storefront latches, car doors and most residential safes open with no damage at all and keep working afterward. When a cylinder is seized, already broken inside, or high-security past the point picking reaches, the work stops there: what drilling does to that particular piece of hardware, what a replacement costs, what else could be tried, and then your answer. The figure said on the call covers that conversation whichever way you decide.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
One call, one figure, and the lock kept whole
Calls answered 24/7 across Palo Alto, Stanford and the towns beside them. The $89 service call, the labor and the parts are inside the figure said on the call, the lock is opened without drilling wherever it allows, and the receipt repeats the figure.