Shuttered drugstores pose a particular threat to older adults, who take more medications than younger people and often rely on pharmacies for advice.
In July, a notice appeared on the front door of The Drug Store, the only pharmacy in rural Kernville, Calif. After 45 years, the proprietor wrote regretfully, it would be closing in four days and transferring customers’ prescriptions to a Rite Aid about 12 miles away.
As the news spread, “there was a real sense of loss, a sense of mourning,” said Roberta Piazza Gordon, who owns Piazza’s Pine Cone Inn in Kernville. The pharmacy had served as a community crossroads where people chatted with neighbors and with the friendly staff.
Its closing also created practical concerns. “We are an aging population,” Ms. Gordon, 69, said of the townspeople.
She relied on The Drug Store for her blood pressure and cholesterol medications and for anti-inflammatories after injuring her shoulder. Her husband, who is 70, also regularly filled prescriptions there.
At The Drug Store, “you got your flu shot, your Covid shot, your pneumonia shot,” she said.
Now those services require a 20- to 30-minute drive to the Rite Aid, which is in Lake Isabella and which Ms. Gordon described as understaffed for its growing number of customers.
“On any given day, there’s a line of 10 to 15 people waiting at the pickup window,” she said. Unlike The Drug Store, the Rite Aid doesn’t deliver.