Attorney Blaine Jones was feeling good. He'd just won his first case as a public defender and was returning to his office when he made a sickening discovery, one that no working person wants to encounter: He was locked out. Someone leaving the office must have hit the lock button on the doorknob, he surmised, locking a door with no working keyhole. Luckily, Jones had taken his car keys with him to court, but he had to abandon his briefcase and paperwork for the day. Enter Les Petosky -- Allegheny County's only locksmith. Even before Jones made it home to Moon, Petosky determined the lock was broken and popped it open with a special tool, ensuring that the lawyers in the Public Defender's Office could get back to work the next morning. By that afternoon, he returned with a new lock. As Petosky packed up, Jones asked him to take a look at his desk drawer. He'd broken a key off inside one of the locks, and he wondered if Petosky could fix it. Without a word, Petosky bent down and, using the thin, flat wrench and rake from his lock-picking kit, he coaxed the broken key from the lock and put it in his pocket. "I'll make you a copy of this," Petosky said. "You're a true professional," Jones said in admiration. It's all in a day's work for Petosky, 57, of Ross. A trained carpenter, Petosky got into locksmithing by accepting a supervisor's suggestion that he help the county's previous locksmith. Petosky attended locksmithing school and learned enough on the job that by the time his predecessor left in 2004, he was ready to take over. Because the county did not replace him in the assistant's position, Petosky soldiers on alone -- one man to keep track of the innumerable locks, keys and entry systems in every county building except the jail and the four Kane Regional Centers. Petosky keeps organized through a system of numbered tags and lists, a sharp memory and a dedication to keeping clutter from overtaking his tiny work space. "It is an incredibly complicated job," Petosky said. More than just jimmying open stuck file cabinets, Petosky builds and repairs locks --- including the massive 1880s-era locks on the outside gates of the county courthouse. He had to fix a spring inside one not too long ago. It was fascinating work, he said. "I opened it up and thought, 'How the heck am I gonna fix this?'" he said. "I got it all back together, though. You're working with something that was built in the 1880s." Sometimes, locksmithing can be emotionally complex, too. Petosky changed the locks on Dr. Cyril H. Wecht's office after the former county coroner was indicted by a federal grand jury. "It was an awkward moment. I had dealt with him, and he always seemed like an OK guy," Petosky said. Each lock, no matter how complex, is built the same way: Millimeters-small pins, color-coded in shades of purple, pink, green and gold, are inserted into holes in a lock core. Inside the core, the pins make the ridges that correspond to the depressions on keys. Over them go springs designed to pop when a key's pattern matches up with the core's, opening the lock. It is painstaking work done with tweezers and a magnifying lens. A millimeter is all the difference between a smooth click and a key sticking and grating at a lock. Before Petosky took the new core for the Public Defender's Office two blocks and four flights of stairs from his workshop, he methodically twisted its key in the lock, stroking the pins with his index finger to ensure they lay flush in their mounts. He tapped graphite powder over the core, twisted again and was satisfied. "Sometimes a 'broken lock' is really just a bad spring," he said. "If I can fix it, I'll fix it because I'm paying taxes here, too." He scans his bench and pats his back pocket. "Got the keys. Got the lock. Got my pick set," he said. "I'm good to go."

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