How 27-year-old left her job to start Locksmith Girl of NYC
Every night, 27-year-old Sahar Yona sleeps next to two phones and a laptop with the volume turned all the way up, so she can hear potential clients call at any time, she says.
Yona is a residential and commercial locksmith based in New York City who’s available 24 hours a day because as a self-employed business owner, “every job counts,” she says. She wants to earn as much money and build her clientele at Locksmith Girl of NYC, which she launched under its current name in July 2025, as quickly as she can, she says.
She has momentum on her side. In January, when business was slow, a video she posted on TikTok — where she told women in New York to call her if they felt unsafe asking men to pick their locks at night — amassed over 600,000 views. Since then, she’s landed more jobs than ever, from men and women, up to 60 per week, she says. On her busiest day so far this summer, she worked from 4 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next morning, she says.
She isn’t an online influencer. Her account only has nine videos, as of Friday afternoon. But her message clearly resonated: Yona declined to share her personal income, noting that she charges varying rates based on the difficulty of each job, but says she now earns more money as a business owner than she previously did as a subcontractor working for larger locksmithing companies. The average annual salary for a locksmith in New York is $82,161, according to job site Indeed.
Yona is part of a growing trend, according to locksmith trade organization ALOA Security Professionals Association. While women make up less than 1% of the country’s over 5 million installation, maintenance and repair workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more women than ever before are becoming locksmiths, an association spokesperson says.
The field can feel tailor-made for “mechanically inclined” women who want to own their own business, says Jennifer Richards, a fourth-generation locksmith who’s run her family’s business in Hickory, North Carolina, for the last 31 years. Her six employees, including her sister-and-law and niece, are all related to her.
“Female locksmiths can think through problems and have a gentle touch,” says Richards, an ALOA member and instructor who notes that more women have taken her classes over the last three years. “Being light-handed is actually a benefit … you can feel the movement [of the pins within the lock] a lot easier.”
$7,000 and a ‘go-getter’ personality
A majority of locksmiths work solo, Richards estimates. While the equipment — like locks, drills and key-cutting machines — is costly, it’s a relatively attainable blue-collar business to start, considering you often only need a van, rather than a storefront and a team of employees, she says.
Yona spent $7,000 to buy her starting set of tools, she says. She got into the industry somewhat by happenstance: While working in her dad’s Muay Thai studio in 2021, she landed an interview for a receptionist position in a locksmith office. Her interviewer — who eventually became her mentor, she says — suggested that she had the temperament to work in the field, and that she should get her locksmith license, Yona says.
“I’d never held a screwdriver in my life,” she says. But she has a strong “go-getter” personality, and decided that being a female locksmith could give her a leg up in the male-dominated industry, she says. She spent two years training, applying for her license and buying her tools, she says. Then, she worked for subcontractors around the city to gain experience.
Yona in New York.
Sahar Yona
As a subcontractor, her work hours and income were relatively consistent and predictable throughout the year, she says. But all her co-workers were men, and she experienced misogyny from customers, peers and bosses, she says.
She decided to become her own boss in November 2024. The people who find Yona on TikTok know she works alone and are generally more patient, she says. Generally, she abides by the same strict boundaries with clients that she learned as a subcontractor, she says: She needs to see a photo or video of the lock and speak with the person on the phone before she accepts a job.
Still, she feels guilty when she takes an hour to relax in a bathhouse, play pool in a local bar or walk her dog, a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix, in Central Park, she says. “The fear is that I can’t go too far from my car. My car is my legs,” she says, adding: “I’m supposed to be available.”
If Yona gets a call while out to dinner with a friend, the friend will often hop in Yona’s car and go with her to the job, she says. Those moments are becoming rarer, she says. She’s always thinking, and feeling a little paranoid, about work, and has begun scoping out a physical storefront for the Locksmith Girl of NYC in her downtime, she adds.
In other moments of free time, Yona practices picking locks. “I like the defiance” of the job, she says, legally getting into places intended to keep people out.
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