ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608090094
SECTION: DISCOVER ROANOKE VALLEY PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JENNIFER MILLER STAFF WRITER
Sixty-three-year old Lenora Brown used to ride the 5F Valley Metro bus from her home in Northwest Roanoke to the Revco pharmacy downtown.
She would make the round trip every few weeks to buy her diabetes medication.
But Brown, who is a retired domestic, can't take the bus anymore since breaking two bones in her left foot in September. She must now look to friends to drive her downtown.
Brown has been a regular customer at the Revco on Campbell Avenue for eight years. She doesn't mind making the extra effort to get downtown because she wouldn't dream of asking anybody but pharmacist Steve Robertson to fill her prescriptions.
Robertson "has always taken care of me," Brown said, watching him prepare her medication. "He's my buddy.
"He teases me, I tease him. We're like old friends."
Robertson, who has worked behind Revco's counter for eight years, doesn't need to look at Brown's medical file on his computer to fill her prescription.
"He knows," Brown said, grinning.
Robertson knows most of his customers by name and all of his customers by face.
"I think I really babied everybody," he said. "And people get used to that. When I'm gone, people will ask [my replacements] to 'fix my prescription like Steve does.'"
Luckily for Revco's shoppers, Robertson doesn't go on vacation often.
Robertson works from 8 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, with only four weeks of vacation time each year. The only trained pharmacist at the store, Robertson doesn't even get a lunch break. He eats his sack lunch at his counter, in-between helping customers.
Robertson never had the time to wander inside the Woolworth next door, a 90-year-old variety store that was considered a Roanoke landmark before it closed at the end of 1993. Woolworth was open while Robertson was working, from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m.
"I never sit down. I am always working," Robertson said. "There is always somebody who needs my help."
Roanokers from Indian Village, Lansdowne Park, and Lincoln Terrace public housing developments are among those who ride Valley Metro buses to the main terminal on Campbell Avenue to go to the Revco across the street.
"If you are here 15 minutes before or after the hour, we'll be busy," Robertson said. "The bus crowd is our bread-and-butter."
Robertson said that while about a quarter of his customers are people who work downtown, the majority of his customers are single mothers on welfare or elderly people.
"The hardest part of my job is telling someone the price of their prescription," he said, pointing out that prescription costs can run more than $100. And for those who can't afford to go to a doctor, Robertson tries "to offer regular advice like a friend would."
"Pharmacists are supposed to be accessible," Robertson said. "There is nothing I enjoy more than answering a question someone needs answered.
"I don't think they train this enough in school."
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON STAFF Steve Robertson, pharmacist atby CNBdowntown's Revco, works more than eight hours a day, six days a
week, 48 weeks a year.