Caribou locksmith wins lifetime achievement award

CARIBOU, Maine — Locksmith Vaughn Keaton has been helping out customers in northern and central Maine with their locked vehicles, doors, and safes for the last 45 years.

Recently, the Maine State Locksmith Association presented the 67-year-old with a Lifetime Achievement award for his dedication to the craft.

As a young man, Keaton “didn’t know what he wanted to do in life,” so he joined the U.S. Army Reserve shortly after graduating from Caribou High School in 1969, which also led to a job as a civilian contractor at Loring Air Force Base in 1972. It was here that he began to pursue the locksmithing trade.

He began working on the base as a carpenter’s helper and shared a shop with a senior locksmith who was close to retirement. Keaton was willing to take the locksmith’s position once that fellow left, but was told by a supervisor that he needed specific training in the field in order to be eligible.

“I borrowed money from the credit union and went to a locksmith school in Hempstead, New York,” he said.

While the course was only three weeks long, Keaton said it was a rigorous program, with classes going into the evening followed by plenty of homework.

Just a year after finishing his courses, Keaton took the senior locksmith’s place, and stayed on as a civilian contractor until the base closed in 1994. In addition to holding down a full-time job as the locksmith for the base, Keaton began working for himself under the name “Keaton’s Locks,” which was expanded to “Keaton’s Lock and Alarm” in 1976.

Keaton said he has “plenty” of noteworthy stories during that time, and that he and about ten other civilian and military workers even made national news in 1992 for being exposed to radiation at Loring.

It began when the base received a directive from the Pentagon to identify any buildings with traces of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos, or other hazards.

“I had a job order to look at building 260 on the east side of the base,” he said, adding that the roof, walls, and floor were ten feet thick, and that there was only a small cavity inside the structure where four vaults could be accessed.

What would have been a simple task was made difficult by the fact that the door was welded shut with a broken handle.

“I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ and told everyone I’d be back in an hour,” Keaton said.

The locksmith returned with a crew from the metal shop, who eventually cut a small hole in the door. Before they could proceed any further, a military medical official arrived with a geiger counter, which spiked as soon as he placed it near the hole.

“I said, ‘Pack it up boys, we’re outta here,’” Keaton recalled.

Because of the contamination, Keaton and the rest of the crew were called back into work shortly after returning home. As he drove into the base, military officials analyzed his truck and clothes for radiation.

“They took all my clothes, underwear and everything, and put them in a plastic bag and wrote on it,” he said. “Then they put me in a barrel full of some sort of decontamination solution and scrubbed me down.”

After receiving fireman boots and coveralls, the crew members were taken to the hospital where further tests revealed no immediate health issues.

Military officials from Kelly Air Force Base in Texas later arrived and discovered that the building was full of radon gas, which Keaton said “isn’t really a hazard, it just needs to be ventilated.”

Keaton then was assigned to a team tasked with opening the building to ventilate the gas, and said numerous national news outlets were camped out on the base while they opened the building.

Outside of military locksmithing, Keaton recalled making about $5,000 one weekend after the base had closed and Phish held a concert on the runway in the late 90s. He said with a chuckle that he spent most of the weekend on the base unlocking vehicles for partying concert-goers who couldn’t remember where they left their keys.

He also encountered a number of interesting customers in the 1980s through his part-time business, citing a couple incidents in which he responded to customers locked out of their cars, only to find their keys outside the vehicles.

“I got a call from AAA one morning to help someone unlock a car in Medway,” he said. “They said nobody in the area was answering their calls, so I told them I’d go.”

Once he arrived, he learned that the man drove up from Boston as a result of his mother passing away, and had to “close up the house and settle the estate.”

“I got up there and we started walking around the car,” Keaton said, “and he was talking to me as I saw a set of keys hanging out of the lock in the back of the vehicle. I look at the keys, then I look at him, and he keeps talking. I tried the keys and opened up the car, then I showed him the keys. His chin almost hit the ground.”

Keaton encountered a similar situation after arriving at his shop at 6 a.m. one morning to find a man sitting on the steps.

“He’d lost all the keys for his pickup truck,” Keaton said. “I asked where it was, and he said it’s way the hell up in Dickey …” which is located on a dirt road north of Allagash. “He got to my shop by hopping on a logging truck and getting dropped off.”

Keaton packed all of his gear, along with a laptop to help him find the code for the key, only to find the keys under the truck.

“I knelt down to take the bottom snaps out of the door panel and looked at the tire,” he said. “The wheels were turned a little bit, so I reached down and pulled out a set of keys. I went in the camp with the keys and he said, ‘Holy, that was fast.’”

Keaton retired from the Army Reserve in 1992, but continued to work as a locksmith on the base until it closed a couple of years later. He said he had an opportunity to work as a civilian locksmith at other bases out of state, but chose to stay in Caribou with his wife Brenda, who owns a daycare in the same building as his shop on Kittinger Avenue.

“We have a door between the two businesses,” he said. “I’ll go in there to get meals or coffee.”

In addition to more than four decades of locksmithing and 21 years in the Army Reserve, Keaton has been part of the Knights of Columbus for 35 years, the American Legion for 15 years, and involved with the Boy Scouts for 55 years.

He also is a founding member of the Maine State Locksmith Association, and served as their treasurer for seven years. Currently, he serves as their secretary and attends monthly meetings at Anglers restaurant in Hampden.

Keaton said he was a bit surprised when association President Robert Park presented him with the award during a recent meeting, and that he’s the fourth person to receive the award since the association was established in 1999.

Currently, Keaton manages BK Locks in Caribou, and is looking for someone else to take over the business so he can retire.

“I could close the doors today and sell everything on eBay or at an annual locksmith flea market in Massachusetts,” he said, “but the problem is that a lot of people know where I live. They would come on nights and weekends, or during the day, and say, ‘I know you’re retired but could you do this for me?’ so I might as well be here.”

Keaton said if he sold the business to someone else, he’d be able to simply direct customers to the new owner, but that he needs to be careful in finding a replacement, since customers place a great deal of trust in their locksmith, and the wrong person could be tempted to break into someone’s house or car.

“Even if I sell it,” he said, “my name will be associated with the new owner, so I need to be careful.”

If Keaton does find a worthy replacement, he said he still hopes to be involved with the community after leaving the trade.

“Once I retire,” he said. “I’d like to do more with the Boy Scouts.”