How Preston Locksmith & Security Was Born
Kevin Yoon started Preston Locksmith & Security in 2008, the year he watched a homeowner in Los Angeles get charged nearly double the quoted price for a simple deadbolt replacement. The dispatcher had given one number on the phone, the technician added a service fee at the door, a parts upgrade in the middle of the job, and a mileage charge on the invoice. The homeowner paid it because she had no choice. She had already missed a day of work and the old lock was in pieces on the floor. Kevin saw the whole thing happen from the passenger seat of a work van, still learning the trade, and he remembers the exact look on her face. Not anger. Resignation. Like this was just what locksmiths did.
That moment became the frame for everything the company would later refuse to do. No bait pricing on the phone. No surprise fees at the door. No holding a customer’s own lock hostage for a number that was never agreed to. Kevin built the company around one fixed habit: the price goes in writing before any work begins, and that written price is the price on the invoice. It started as a one-person operation in Los Angeles and grew, over the years, into a multi-state network of independent local locksmith businesses, each one held to the same written-price rule and the same visibility promise. The growth never changed the original reason for starting. If anything, it proved how many people had been waiting for exactly that.
Kevin Yoon’s Personal Connection to the Locksmith Trade
Kevin didn’t grow up dreaming about locks. He found the trade through repetition and curiosity, the kind that comes from taking things apart to see how they work and then having to put them back before anyone noticed. The first time he pulled a worn Kwikset cylinder from a weathered front door, the pins were gummed up with years of graphite and dust. The key still turned, barely. But the mechanism inside told a story about every hand that had touched it: the wear patterns on the pins, the smoothed edges of the keyway, the slight bend in the tailpiece. Fixing it wasn’t just mechanical. It was understanding how a door had been used, by whom, and how often. That felt different from other work he had done.
What kept him in the trade was the feeling of showing up to someone’s worst part of the day and leaving it better than he found it. Locked out with groceries thawing in the trunk. A front door that will not latch after a break-in. A bedroom lock that stopped turning on a Sunday morning. The job is usually small, but the relief is not. Kevin has spent the years since 2008 chasing that specific feeling: the exhale a person lets out when the key turns and the door opens. He would tell you the work is not about locks. It is about the moment a person’s day stops being derailed. If he were not doing this, he would still be working with his hands. It is the part of the job he never wanted to give up. The tools, the smell of brass dust and machine oil, the weight of a quality deadbolt in the palm, the click of a properly installed strike plate, those are the details that still make the work feel like craftsmanship. He has lived in the trade long enough that his hands know a Schlage cylinder from an off-brand copy by touch, and he can hear whether an Abloy mechanism is engaging correctly from across the room. That depth of familiarity only comes from time, and it is not something a franchise training manual can hand to a person in a week.
Meet Kevin Yoon – The Person Behind Every Job
Kevin Yoon is the Owner & Founder of Preston Locksmith & Security. He entered the trade when both the tools and the expectations were simpler, and he has built his career around the idea that a locksmith should be judged by whether the job was done right and priced honestly, not by how fast the call was cleared. He is state-licensed where licenses are required, works through insured and bonded standards, and has spent his working life around locks, keys, doors, and the people who depend on them. He is not a corporate franchise technician following a script. He is a tradesperson who decided what this company would stand for, and he still holds every location in the network to that standard.
Outside the trade, Kevin is a person who believes that if you put your name on something, you stand behind it. That is not a slogan to him. It is the reason the company’s pricing rule exists the way it does, settled before the first tool comes off the truck. He treats every customer’s door like it is his own, every invoice like it has his name at the bottom, and every finished job as a continued relationship rather than a one-time transaction.
Our Promise to Homeowners
Every job under the Preston Locksmith & Security name runs on one promise that has not changed since 2008: the price you are quoted before the work starts is the price on the invoice. That promise exists because Kevin watched the opposite happen and decided the company would never do it. No adding a service fee at the door, no deciding mid-job that the parts cost more than estimated, no final number that surprises anyone. If the scope changes, the new written price comes before the new work starts, not after.
The promise extends beyond price. Every location works to The Relay Visibility Guarantee, the standard that customers tell us matters most. You get a live arrival time, not a four-hour window. Every technician is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. Every pro sends photos of the work before and after so you can see what was done, even if you could not stand over their shoulder the entire time. And every job is booked the way people actually live now, in a tap, without phone tag or callbacks.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed where required: every pro working under the Preston Locksmith & Security name is required to hold the license their state mandates for locksmith work.
- Insured & bonded standards: each location is required to carry the coverage their state and municipality require, so a homeowner is never left holding the bag if something goes wrong.
- Years of local experience: the company was founded in 2008, and the network has been serving homeowners across multiple states ever since.
- Strong local reputation: each location is independently owned and operated, an actual local business that agreed to work to a national standard, not a corporate outpost pretending to be local.
Here is why those credentials matter when you are hiring someone to work inside your home. A license means the person at your door has met a minimum standard your state actually enforces. Insurance and bonding mean a mistake does not become your financial problem. Local ownership means the person accountable for the work lives in the community they serve, and their reputation is on the line with every job. Those are the things we would want to know before inviting a stranger into our own home, so we make them requirements for every location that carries our name.
Rooted in the Communities We Serve
Preston Locksmith & Security began in Los Angeles and has since grown into a network of independent local locksmith businesses across the country, from the California coast through the Pacific Southwest and beyond into Florida. Every location is locally owned and operated, staffed by people who live and work in the communities they serve. We do not pretend to be from every town. Each Preston Locksmith & Security location is a real local business that agreed to work to The Relay Visibility Guarantee, which means you get the same standard of care whether you are calling from San Diego, Fresno, Long Beach, Miami, Anaheim, or any of the other metros we cover. The tools, the pricing rule, and the promise stay the same. The person at your door is your neighbor.
Written by Kevin Yoon, Owner & Founder at Preston Locksmith & Security, serving homeowners since 2008.