At El Camino College, there are 3,500 doors, which means many locks and key pads. Sometimes people lose their keys and sometimes doors just won’t open.

All those responsibilities are taken care of by one man: Roy Dietz.

A strong, stocky man raised in the city of Hawthorne, wearing his signature cowboy hat, sunglasses, El Camino employee shirt and bearing a large cross tattoo on his arm, Dietz might look like a cowboy coming to the rescue.

Listening to country music while driving around in his green cart on campus, carrying his different tools, Dietz is a sign of relief to the campus community.

It is Dietz’s 15th year working at El Camino as a locksmith, but Dietz has also worn different hats in his life, serving as president of the classified employees and also once as a church pastor. Dietz is also a husband married to his wife Sara for 29 years and a father to two daughters.

Dietz’s work day begins at 7 a.m. He goes through his tablet to see what work orders there are for the day. As he works on doors, faculty and staff greet him and sometimes exchange jokes.

Each day there is some door not opening right or some lock not functioning. In between the busy day of repairs, Dietz recalled how he got introduced to locksmith work.

“When I was 16 my future father-in-law Bob Webb, the father of my wife Sara, was a locksmith with his own company and took me along to USC to work on campus and dorm locks and taught me the trade,” Dietz said.

Despite the early experience, locksmithing did not become the first career move for Dietz. From 1989 to 1992, Dietz worked at the Los Angeles International Airport as a freight runner. That is, until an injury.

“In 1992 while I was unloading freight all the baggage fell on top of me and I really injured my back,” Dietz said.

Later, he was involved in a car accident, making the injury worse. It caused him to stop working at the airport.

Dietz remembered his experience learning locksmith work and decided to make a career out of it.

In 1994, Dietz went to the California Institute of Locksmithing in Van Nuys. The institute, which opened in 1972, is the only state-certified locksmith institute in California.

According to the California Institute of Locksmithing, the amount of Californians training to become locksmiths has been steady and increasing. There is a diverse amount of locksmithing jobs available in California and the rest of the country, including colleges and universities.

“Overall our school is teaching more students per year, the locksmith profession is not shrinking, and our graduates are able to find locksmithing jobs because we get many requests from different companies needing locksmiths,” Teresa Friedman, director of operations for the California Institute of Locksmithing, said.

From 1998 to 2009, Dietz worked at the Honda corporate building in Torrance. Working with card reader locks, doors and keys, Dietz became more of an accomplished locksmith.

“It was in 1998, that I was looking and praying for a locksmith job and I found a job at Honda and at the same time my wife Sara and I were expecting our first child,” Dietz said.

However, after a decade at Honda, Dietz decided to move on to a new job: El Camino College.

“When I first started working at El Camino College it was difficult because the locksmith office was a complete mess and I found it difficult traveling from one end of campus to the other because of student traffic,” he said.

Since 2009, the campus has gone through much construction, including the Math Business Allied Health Building and the Student Services Building. This has kept Dietz busy, making sure it is all up to standard.

The biggest challenges of the job have been cleaning and organizing the locksmith office and the constant work on the Humanities Building.

For Dietz, having to come back to the same building and make the same repairs over and over is frustrating.

“The Humanities Building is my nemesis since I have to return to fix it often because the door frames on the interior doors were not properly installed and things come out of place often,” Dietz said.

The locksmith office, however, has been a success in cleaning and organizing. After buying many large cabinets, Dietz is able to organize his different tools and parts into individual drawers. People are now able to walk in and out of the office without hazard.

“When I first opened the doors to the locksmith office, I said ‘Oh my God,’ because of what a mess the room was and it was really difficult to even walk in,” he said.

Dietz also works with the classified employees of El Camino, after becoming president of the union in 2020. This includes janitors, electricians, painters, shipping and receiving, and those who work in offices.

William Blackwell, 37, works in shipping and receiving and is one of the classified employees.

“Roy is great to work with and very positive and he helped me when I started the job in 2020 in how the previous shipping guy did the job,” Blackwell said.

Another employee who works with Dietz is David Molina, 45. Molina works with material handling and mail at El Camino.

“Roy makes himself available as union president when you need to talk with him, [he] listens to ideas, and will help you get a new key if yours gets broken,” Molina said.

Leading the classified employees union means Dietz represents the classified employees at meetings, including with the Board of Trustees. Responsibilities also include listening to the members’ issues and communicating and explaining El Camino’s decisions with classified employees. When there are employee grievances, Dietz looks into the issues.

Dietz also once had the opportunity of working as a church pastor. When the senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church of Hawthorne decided it was time to leave, the church had a leadership gap.

Dietz, who had already been serving as a youth pastor, decided to take a leap of faith and served as interim head pastor from 2011 to 2014 until a full-time pastor could be hired.

“When the pastor left the church it only had 15 people attending and was a month away from closing its doors and they couldn’t find anyone yet to become the next full-time pastor,” Dietz said.

Writing sermons and leading a church proved to be a new and interesting challenge. Dietz often received criticism for his sermons from the small congregation. Yet, he faithfully continued for three years.

“There was one old lady who was a longtime church member who would tell me upfront that my sermons sucked after the service, yet later she had me speak at her husband’s memorial after he passed,” Dietz said.

After a year, the congregants told Dietz his sermons were improving. As time went on, the congregation also started growing. When the church found a new full-time pastor, the congregation was at 75 people.

“When I was a kid I had always walked by that church and I had never imagined that I would be attending that church and serve as its pastor in the future,” Dietz said.

Challenges and changes are things that Dietz does not shy away from. He approaches them with confidence and determination.

“When you get comfortable you get complacent,” Dietz said.