Foty Lock & Safe

Photo: Jeff Silker

Nationally recognized locksmith picks Fairmont to unlock key niches.

Many people reading this now have let more than their fair share of incredible career opportunities slip right through their fingers. Mike Foty of Fairmont-based Foty Lock & Safe would openly admit being part of that crowd. Yet rather than resign himself to an existence of continual, lifelong regret—as perhaps most people would if having lived his lot—feisty Foty flailed away and eventually late in life carved out a successful business niche.

“I came from a large family in Minnetonka, the oldest of six children,” said 65-year-old Foty in a Connect Business Magazine interview. “We were the extreme poor of Minnetonka. I mean we had nothing, absolutely nothing. People think of Minnetonka as wealthy, but it’s economically diverse. I was picked on all through school because I was short, Catholic, Italian, and poor.”

Foty’s father had a sixth-grade education and was a sheet metal worker for States Electric Manufacturing. However, his father also was a naturally gifted inventor. The elder Foty—similar to son Mike—also allowed more than his share of incredible opportunity slip away. Perhaps his most marketable invention was a car battery-powered “trouble light,” which automobile mechanics today use to illuminate tough-to-reach spots. The first Foty trouble light had an auto headlight inside a wooden box, a strap handle, and alligator clips for a battery connection. The elder Foty lacked knowledge and money to pursue a patent. The person stealing his idea didn’t.

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It was his father who first turned the key that unlocked his son’s curiosity. “My introduction to locksmithing came when I was six years old,” he said. “I had a little mailbox coin bank, which had been a premium for opening a savings account at Wayzata State Bank. I had lost the key. My dad showed me how to bend and flatten a finishing nail and pick the lock. He wasn’t a locksmith. I was fascinated. By the time I was 10, I had made a set of different skeleton-type keys to open padlocks. My buddies would talk me into opening up buildings that had master padlocks and they would go in looking for booze to drink.”

As a 15-year-old in 1961, Foty began working in St. Louis Park at McDonald’s, one of that company’s early restaurants. His immediate boss and swing shift manager was Jerry Bambery, who went on to own five McDonald’s in southern Minnesota, including three in Mankato.

Said Foty, “In time, I made swing manager along with Jerry, then he moved up to assistant manager. He was a maniac driver and once totaled his 1953 Chevy. I bought it from him and had to replace the entire front end. Jerry was a great guy, and a hard, hard worker, but a wild man driving.”

It was at this juncture Foty let his first incredible career opportunity slip through. He felt McDonald’s was “a very honorable company,” but just couldn’t envision any future in grilling hamburgers. He started out earning 65 cents an hour, and left as a swing manager at perhaps $1.25. When he left for the Navy in 1965, McDonald’s said he had a job there upon returning—if he wanted one.

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He spent his first two years in the Navy at Kingsville Naval Air Station in Texas, where he wasn’t a pilot. “I didn’t have the college education to be one,” he said. “Down in Kingsville, because I knew how to type, I started out doing secretarial work. I had to work with a lot of stupid Navy forms and got frustrated having to type on them because they were cumbersome, didn’t have enough room to type, and didn’t flow. I ended up redesigning them, which got the attention of a command base in Corpus Christi. So I ended up working with a captain and admiral there. I redesigned all the student pilot control forms.”

In his second year, he served on a flight line as a plane captain, meaning his job was to make sure all aircraft were topped off with fuel and oxygen and ready for flight. While in that capacity, he became part of a guinea pig squadron debuting a new Navy efficiency program called 3M (not the company), which stood for maintenance, material, and management. Near the end of his assignment, the commanding officer tried encouraging Foty to enlist in the officer training program and attend college. The Navy would have paid everything.

“But I was a really stupid kid,” he lamented concerning another missed opportunity. “I should have taken it. It would have changed everything. The commanding officer said I would do really well. He saw potential in me that I couldn’t see. I had been told I was stupid all throughout high school.”

After finishing two years, he was just days away from heading off to San Diego and Vietnam. “I then got an emergency packet change of orders for Le Moore, California, which had the world’s largest naval air base,” he said. “I was sent there because I was the only person on the West Coast that knew 3M. My job was to train a particular squadron for three months before they were sent off to Vietnam. Then they would send in another squadron. With it, I had to go through an admiral’s inspection every three months. Having to go through one in your lifetime is bad enough. The inspections were living hell—a white glove inspection of everything.”

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He left the Navy in 1970 and didn’t think twice about returning to McDonald’s—a missed opportunity again. Within a couple months span, he was a Minneapolis taxi cab driver, food wholesale truck driver, and a United Parcel Service delivery driver.

In time, he would physically have the worst two days of his life. One Sunday, he was trying to fix a huge electronic calculator at home while standing barefoot in Bermuda shorts on a damp concrete floor. He survived the massive electrical shock only because his fall to the ground unplugged the cord. The next day at UPS, a 48-pound box of gloves fell on his head and face, which caused serious injury. He said, “Because of the work ethic my dad taught, I continued toughing it out and got my truck loaded, but after a week the pain was getting worse. By Friday, I couldn’t walk. The neck pain was incredible.” Despite almost unbearable neck pain for weeks, he would not miss a workday. After his immediate supervisor refused to sign off on an accident report because it made the supervisor look bad, and the same supervisor wouldn’t sign off on a promotion, Foty left UPS in November 1973. His doctor had said another injury in the same area could cause permanent paralysis.

While working as a taxi driver three years earlier, Foty had had the itch to continue his love for locksmithing. He had asked the people at Floyd Lock & Safe to teach him more, and they did—for three hours each Saturday for $10 a session. In the process, he had learned a great deal more about what he thought would be a lifelong hobby. But after the serious UPS injury, he decided in 1973 to turn his passion into a profession and enroll at Floyd Institute of Registered Security Training in Minneapolis. Since he was a Vietnam veteran, the federal government paid for it.

“I attended six months,” he said, “got straight A’s, and was two weeks from finishing. Then the head administrator was caught doing wrong and all the teachers knew what had been going on. So the school owner fired everyone. Because I had straight A’s, they asked me if I could teach the last two weeks. I began teaching the next day.”

Soon after graduation, Floyd Lock & Safe offered him a job under the condition he stay three years. He ended up staying 22. Over that time, he worked his way up from technician, to running a store, to service manager, and finally the last 14 years to consultant.

“Being a consultant was a fancy way of saying I was a highly technical salesman,” he said. “For clients, I had McDonald’s, NSP, GE, Holiday Station stores—got that on a cold call—Cargill, and Cub Foods. I was calling on headquarters and individual stores, and set up a lot of McDonald’s. I helped design their security. Jim Simon was the security director for McDonald’s Corporation, and he and I designed all kinds of different systems, many of which are still in use today.”

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However, well into the mid-‘80s, Foty may have outwardly had the appearance everything was going well, but inwardly he was hurting. A very delicate situation evolved involving his first wife, who had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness. They had been married almost 20 years and shared five children. His wife had tried killing him and two of their children several times, he said, even going so far as writing his first name on the sides of shotgun shells. She wrongly accused him of child abuse three times. Right before his trial following the last accusation—that was nine months of living hell, he said—his wife abandoned their children and would never talk to or see them again. The filth the police found upon her leaving took many months to clean up. Suddenly, Foty was a single parent raising five children, with the two youngest in diapers and with disabilities. (He remarried, this time to Shari, his present wife of 23 years.)

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In 1995, Medeco High Security Lock Company chose Foty and other top locksmiths around the world to participate in a four-day focus group that suggested product improvements. That same year, after being senior consultant among 19 over the last decade, Foty left Floyd Security for a position with Baldinger Bakery to handle the McDonald’s account. He worked in nine states. They promised to train him for one year and then promote him to international security director.

“That’s why I left Floyd Security,” he said, “to become Baldinger’s international security director. I would have had a six-figure income. But ten months into my training, McDonald’s decided to pull the Arch Deluxe sandwich from its menu.” The ramifications of McDonald’s decision caused a financial chain-reaction at Baldinger, which led to Foty being demoted instead of promoted.

During this 1996 dark period with Baldinger, Foty was in Blue Earth and Fairmont delivering an emergency order to McDonald’s. While filling up with gas at the Fairmont SuperAmerica, he noticed a Chamber of Commerce map under the glass at the checkout. He also mentally noted the city had a number of lakes, which intrigued him. Days before, he had talked with his wife about moving south to start his own locksmithing business. He asked the SuperAmerica clerk if Fairmont had an old locksmith ready to retire. She mentioned George Dishong. In time, Foty would purchase Dishong’s business. He hadn’t known a soul in Fairmont prior to moving there in 1997.

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Today, Foty Lock & Safe does mechanical and electronic lock work, surveillance systems, burglar alarm systems, safes, and mechanical and electronic access control for business, government, and residential customers. One large corporate account has been Weigh-Tronix in Fairmont. Foty is one of only three Minnesota locksmiths servicing jails, including ones in Martin County and Waseca County. Unlike many locksmiths, he works on weekends and is qualified “to do everything,” he said. He is a Certified Professional Locksmith and Power Limited Technician, the latter meaning he has a low-voltage electrical license.

Besides being an inventor like his father—he and others have held a lock-related patent since the 1980s—Foty has become known nationally. He sits on the board of the Minnesota Chapter of Associated Locksmiths of America and used to write three monthly columns for the state’s newsletter. One column featured legislative issues, another law and a personal commentary, and a third was on locksmithing. He has written for the International Locksmith Ledger and The National Locksmith. Lately, he has become involved with the Legislative Action Network Council of the Associated Locksmiths of America to help move national legislation forward.

Another twist: Foty has been a forensic locksmith qualified to testify in court as an expert witness. Recently, he finished a Twin Cities project for an insurance company involving the theft of a Porsche. In the 1980s, he had a high-profile case working for Minnesota legal legend, Ron Meshbesher, of Meshbescher & Spence.

In addition, in what might be his greatest legacy, Foty played a role in Minnesota’s Truth in Advertising law. One day, he received a telephone call from the vice president of the Minnesota Chapter of Associated Locksmiths of America. Through it, Foty learned a state bill was afoot to stop floral industry scammers. The same problem had been occurring in the locksmith industry. New York scammers were advertising in Minnesota Yellow Page ads for locksmith services, giving low rates over the telephone, and charging customers extra fees on site. The scammers were tainting the industry.

Foty’s job was to have the bill include locksmithing. One day, he received a telephone call from Rep. Bob Gunther asking for feedback on a draft of the bill. It was then Foty realized the bill had a hole a truck could drive through. The way it was written, small businesses would not be legally required to have a real, physical address, which would have enabled these scammers to continue. Foty suggested a change and the bill could end up helping tens of thousands of Minnesota businesses and consumers fight scammers—and not just those in the locksmith industry. Even though Foty personally let slip several incredible career opportunities early in life, it would appear that through his work on this legislation he has more than made amends by potentially saving many small businesses. For his work, he received a plaque of recognition from Associated Locksmiths of America.

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Cold Call

CONNECT: Have you seen some odd things out in the field?

FOTY: You have no idea how many people I’ve gotten back into their houses who were standing outside in nightgowns. The funniest was in Minneapolis. The gentleman had locked himself out of his house getting his newspaper. When I got there, he was dressed in boxer shorts, black socks with garters, and a sleeveless tee shirt—in a blizzard. I picked the lock open. I felt sorry for the guy. A few days later, the same guy did the same exact thing again. This time, in addition to his boxer shorts, he had his shoes on. It was a funny sight.

THE ESSENTIALS: Foty Lock & Safe

• Founded: 1997
• Phone: 888-368-5691
• Address:
  619 East Blue Earth Ave.
  Fairmont, MN 56031 (MAP)
• Web: fotylock.com