Former Vice Mayor Jim Gray, who was out on the campaign trail yesterday, was forced to call Pop-A-Lock after misplacing the key to the city…again. The gaffe left Gray, who’s currently running for state Senate, stranded in Nicholasville for nearly three hours before Pop-A-Lock arrived and resolved the issue. Gray was wrapping up campaigning at Jessamine County’s newest “hot spot” Brannon Crossing, after spending the day hitting the long campaign trail from the Nicholasville Library to Big Boy (the one in Nicholasville) to The Boot Store (also in Nicholasville).

“After an entire day of campaigning across the great county of Jessamine,” tells Gray, “I met up with some of my friends at Movie Tavern to see The Conjuring 2. But right when things started conjuring, I noticed I didn’t have the key to the city in my pocket anymore and would be locked out of Lexington…again.”

Gray says he then started frantically searching for his precious key and retracing his steps. However, this proved to be futile since he’d spent the whole day traveling the vast lands of Nicholasville.

“I thought I had left an extra one under the mat at Cracker Barrel but it wasn’t there. I then tried calling former mayor Theresa Isaac. She still has a spare but I hate bugging her with stuff like this all the time. It was just last week that I had to call her for help remembering the code on the garage door keypad. How am I supposed to remember which Lexington zip code is my password when there’s like 30 different ones or however many there are?”

With former mayor Theresa Isaac on vacation and unable to bring him the spare, it was Pop-A-Lock guru Dale Burns who was the first responder on the scene to assist Gray.

“I got there as quickly as I could but didn’t make any special effort to speed or anything just because it was our mayor,” says Burns. “We here at Pop-A-Lock take a lot of pride in being a non-partisan locksmith. Plus, it was the third time this month he’s called us. Few weeks ago he got stuck in Versailles when he dropped his key to the city in the moat at The Castle. His assistant said he had it out again, twirling it around his finger like a bigshot.”

With Pop-A-Lock having a master copy, they had no problem Conjuring 2 new keys and helping Gray get back into Lexington. Jim noted, “The fine folks at Pop-A-Lock are a great example of how essential small businesses are to our community. They are quick and affordable. I’d love to see them be able to expand to other cities in our state such as Louisville. When I lost my keys there a few months ago, I had to call the Papa-Lock John Schnatter and while they did arrive in 30 minutes or less, their prices were very unreasonable and the keys were covered in garlic sauce.”