This happened sometime during the winter of the `73-`74 year. By this time I was a "well-tempered" junior; I had spent the uncountable Frosh hours exploring the steam tunnels and I had a set of master keys which would grant me access to most of the campus points of interest. Also, although I didn't have much personality myself, I tended to associate with the Jeff Harrow/Dan Packman contingent of the house.

Now, being a middle aged engineer, I have a better understanding of the Institute's position. The Safety Office decided that Millikan roof access and the inherent "attractive nuisance" value of the campus zenith was a combination for disaster.

So they changed the roof lock from the Millikan master used for the rest of the building to a high security "Sargent Keso" lock, advertised to be "unpickable".

But, at the time, I was one of the young immortals and we took this as a challenge. So we decided to steal the door.

I don't remember there being a lot of planning. It was basically decided that we would converge on the library in small groups after dinner around ~8pm. There were about 10 to 15 people that floated in and out over the ~2 hour caper.

There were two obvious problems to be overcome in our mission:

1. The getaway route - How do you remove a 100+ pound steel fire door from the library?
2. Gaining roof access - How do you get past an unpickable lock?

The roof level is essentially the 10th floor of the library and the library sitter was located on the 1st floor. It was an obvious choice to use the fire escape stairs from floor 10 to 9, the elevator from floor 9 to 2, again the fire escape stairs to the 1st floor, and then out.

Our earlier reconnaissance determined that the 1st floor fire escape door was equipped with three alarms. One rang into the library sitter's area in the lobby. This was disabled by distracting the sitter and switching the alarm to "silent". The second alarm was a true fire alarm into the fire department on the panic bar door handle. The lock on this alarm was picked to disable it. The final alarm was a pressure plate built into the door frame. We knew that this rang into campus security. We decided to rely on speed to defeat this alarm and planned our escape route through the nearest access to the steam tunnels.

Gaining access to the roof did not lend itself as readily to solution as problem 1. The new lock on the roof door was proving to be difficult to pick. The lock include three separate sets of pins and the best lockpicks in the house couldn't open it. So, things were looking bad, .. we were going down in defeat!!

Then someone noticed that next to the fire escape stairway is an air shaft which apparently runs vertically the entire height of the building. There are also gratings into this airshaft at every landing of the stairs.

We were unable to remove the grating on the roof level and 9th floor stair landing, but we were successful on the 8th floor. So we now have a path to the roof, but who is going to follow it. We called on that old "Throop Climber" Joe Polchinski.

After tying a rope around his waist, Joe climbed past the 9th floor to the roof level. There he found that the air shaft extended another story above that nominal 10th floor. After his three story climb, Joe dropped onto the roof and opened the door from the roof side.

We popped the door pins and with the help of about 8 sturdy volunteers we made our getaway.

After taking our booty back to Blacker, I remember wandering back over to Millikan on the way to the Coffee House. We had a nice conversation with the Sergeant of Security about what might have happened there. This was a Friday night and he told us that he would have to have the door back by Monday. We told him that we would try to find whatever was taken and make sure it was returned in time.

That night the library closed at about midnight rather than the usual 2 am. I don't remember any other early closings during my four years at Caltech.

The people who were involved with this caper signed the door with indelible ink and the door was returned to the Safety Office at about 2 am the following Monday morning. The lock was sent back through campus mail in an envelope.

There is a picture of the signed door on page 209 of the 1974 Big T. At least some of the perpetrators are pictured. They are from left to right: Paul Goodson, David Smallberg, Joe Polchinski, Bob Higley, Chuck Hales, Dayna Salter, Jeff Harrow, and Lester Buck. [See above]

- Chuck Hales

During January of 1977 I returned to California on vacation. While touring the campus with my fiancee, Sally, the signed door was still leading to the roof on Millikan. I was always sorry that I didn't get a photograph of it at that time.

Does anyone know how long the door went before it was painted?

It's still there! -MID