Mike Haley of New London, Missouri, is the owner of Mike's Lock 'n Key, an established successful locksmith business that Mr. Haley had begun over 30 years ago. In his professional capacity as a locksmith, Haley carried the Meilink Safe product line, and on January 10, 1999 his personal Meilink safe was put to the ultimate test when his house and business was destroyed by an accidental fire. No one is absolutely certain as to the cause of the fire, (Haley suspects mice chewed through a wire, causing a spark which ignited the insulation) and the ensuing inferno was like nothing he had ever seen. The heat inside the structure was so intense that the refrigerator had been reduced into a blob of metal and the bathroom fixtures actually melted into molten steel.

After it raged for about four hours the fire department was able to extinguish the blaze; too late to save anything of value, or so Haley thought. While going through the remains of his house, the firefighters came across a black metal box-like object, which turned out to be Haley's Meilink Safe which had been stored in the bedroom closet - it was basically the only thing salvaged from the entire house.

After driving around with it in the back of his pickup for 4 days or so, Haley finally worked up the nerve to open the safe, expecting to find nothing but ash. Instead, to his delight, the only thing among the contents of the safe that had sustained damage was an old Canadian five-dollar bill, which was singed. Haley had some old coins and business documents, but, most crucially, contained in the safe were titles and abstracts to his property, which aided and expedited the processing of his insurance claims. Within a few months, and using tools that were in his truck during the fire, Haley was able to re-start his business and break ground on a new house.

Although this Meilink Safe had met the Underwriter's Laboratories test requirements for maintaining interior temperature below 350 degrees (°F) with an exterior temperature of 1700 degrees for one hour, no one expected it to preserve the contents in a fire that reached well over 1,800 degrees (°F) for over four hours. A testimony to a great product that truly went "above and beyond" anyone's expectations.