question about H.S. lockers

Back when I was in high school, the lockers had built-in combination locks on them and you received the combination on the first day of school. An addition was added onto the building for my sophomore year (where most of the sophomore lockers were now located) and when the guidance office handed out the combinations, they screwed up. Instead of getting the combo for the assigned locker, we each got the one for the locker next to it. It took a few days for the school to assign all new combinations (I was on the tennis team at the time and not at all happy about having to carry the stupid racquet around with me all day. )

Fun times. Fun times.

Hi Mellymel!
So, I've been lurking on AbsoluteWrite for about a year and totally missed the party on this locker issue. But, it struck me as interesting as I've included a scene in my contemporary YA novel of gym locker theft.

That actually happened to me in my high school! I'm not sure who did it or how they did it. But, after all these years, I'm now a teacher in a middle school. All of the lockers have combinations built in them. There is a master key that counselors, school administrators, building services, and security all have. That's actually a lot of people. Oh, and it's not like you can go back to a locker the next year. There is a list of combination rotation for five years and every summer the building service workers change the combination on every locker.

Anyway, I have a scene in my novel where a gym locker is broken into, and the culprits stole a master key.

Curious, how did you eventually pull off your scene?

-Peyton Garver

At my child’s high school they are provided with locks in their first year for the class. They also have gyms and the gym locker has a lock on there.
But they are key locks and with youngsters the key gets lost in a number of days. So they are allowed to change the padlocks and I prefer combo locks.

Whether it is the school or gym, my best padlock choice is the FJM Security SX-575 combination lock. The good thing with this padlock is that 4 dial buttons give 10,000 possible combinations that will be impractical to try to guess. One can spend a whole day there and in fact he will already have been caught.
The only thing with best locks for gym lockers is to teach the child to be cautious when setting so that someone else doesn’t peep and figure out the combo. And the dials are clear and easy to read so that one can set it in a poorly illuminated place or when hiding with the other hand.
The shackle is heavy duty and fairly pick or bolt cutting resistant.

In case boy forgets the combo as it is always common, there is no need to bolt cut or pry the padlock. A master key override can be used to open and reset the combination lock. The master key can also work for multiple padlocks such that you don’t have to carry a bunch of keys. This works well for my other need such as luggage bags and storage units.

When I was in high school, if you wanted into someone else's locker you just pried it open with your knife. Times have changed...

Jeff