A Riverdale Park locksmith has gone mobile-only and shut his brick-and-mortar store after 64 years, due to lingering effects of the pandemic.

Ernie’s Lock Co. was started in 1960 by Ernie and Elsa Boswell and changed hands several times before current owner Eric Paretino took over.

Throughout that time, it maintained a storefront at 4500 Queensbury Rd., a block from the historic Riverdale Park town center.

Walk-in customers, including contractors, large commercial accounts and landlords, would buy new locks and have keys duplicated by hand.

But Paretino told the Hyattsville Wire that walk-in business dropped dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic and has never recovered.

“2019 was one of the best I’ve had in years, so no one saw that coming,” he said.

He said that the pandemic caused many landlords to shift to buying cheap new doorknobs on Amazon and then throwing them away rather than hiring a locksmith to re-key the doors once or twice a year.

Paretino shut the storefront just before new year’s and now runs the business out of a van kitted out with his equipment and his home workspace in Bowie.

He’s still offering the same services at the same website, email and phone number, but he’ll have to come to customers. He recommended that landlords and others who regularly have locksmith needs set up an account.

Paretino is in the process of selling the building where the locksmith was located, but it’s unclear yet what the new owners will do with the space.

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