This past week started off around 7 a.m. Monday when my cellphone rang.

“Help! We’re locked out of the building!” was the message.

Sure enough. Over the weekend someone smashed the front door lock, the side door lock and even the gate lock that provides access to the rear of our building on Porfirio Diaz.

“Ha! Someone doesn’t like what you write,” suggested locksmith extraordinaire David Saucedo when we called for help.

David scrambled one of his locksmiths but it was not an easy job even for an expert. The man who arrived to help had to resort to a generator-powered angle grinder to get the front door open.

The cops offered to fingerprint the doors but by that time our whole crew – eager to get to work – had fingered pretty much every square inch of all the damaged doors. This in a futile effort to see if their keys would work.

“Got a video security system,” the investigating officer asked? “Uh, no, but we will,” I responded.

The worst of it for us is that the cylinders that were damaged were MIWA high-security locks, activated by keys in which magnets have been embedded. (Read expensive.)

Was it an unsuccessful break-in attempt or just neighborhood vandalism? Not sure we’ll ever know. But if it happens again, at least we’ll have pictures.