Pharmacy family

Fourth-generation pharmacist begins work at Stoick Drug

You have to wonder if Reinhold "Rhynie" Stoick knew what he was starting when he challenged - and passed - the Minnesota Pharmacy Board examination shortly after the turn of the century.

In the 90 or so years since then, the Stoick family has had an unbroken line of pharmacists practicing the profession.

Almost half that time, they've been behind the counter in the same storefront along U.S. 2, just a couple of blocks east of Kalispell's Main Street.

Last week, 23-year-old Kim Murray set a new milestone when she walked across the stage at The University of Montana and became the first in the family to hold the university's new Doctor of Pharmacy distinction.

Even so, she's clinging to tradition by offering up the same personal service in the same store where Grandpa Stoick set the pace 43 years ago.

IN A TIME when box stores and national chains have gobbled up a big share of the pharmacy trade, that personal touch sets independent pharmacies apart. And it may well prove to be their lifeline.

"It boils down to one-on-one service," Murray's uncle, Greg Stoick, said. "We take an interest in their lives. We know what's going on with them."

And they'll call their doctors when a question arises that the patient can't quite answer. They'll straighten out the paper bag full of medications when a customer walks in trying to sort out all of them. They'll direct-bill insurance when needed.

It's probably the way Rhynie Stoick treated his customers back in the 1920s.

Reinhold Leopold Stoick's license from the Montana Pharmacy Board still hangs, framed, over the pharmacy counter in today's Stoick Drug.

He grew up in South Dakota and, as a young man, challenged the Minnesota Pharmacy Board exam without benefit of a formal pharmacist's education. He returned to practice in Macintosh, S.D., then moved to Missoula and worked in pharmacies there in the 1920s. Stoic opened his own drugstore there around 1937 or 1938 at 110 West Main and ran it until he died in 1956.

By that time his son had been working in the store and was nearly finished with his pharmacy college training at The University of Montana. Jerome F. Stoick's framed pharmacist license still hangs alongside his father's license in the Kalispell store.

After his dad's death, Jerry Stoick moved with his own family to work in a Deer Lodge pharmacy and then to a Sandpoint, Idaho, drugstore. He was there for five years when an opportunity came up in Kalispell.

Jim Adams, who had run a pair of Adams Drug locations in Kalispell, passed away in December 1964, leaving his family with the decision either to sell the shops or close them. Adams' legacy lived on when Jerry Stoick bought the East Idaho Street store in 1965, leaving the Adams Drug name in place for several years before changing it to Stoick Drug.

SEVEN independent pharmacies operated in friendly competition at the time. At the East Idaho store, Betty Stoick handled the bookkeeping and raised five children while her husband took charge at the store. Jerry is now retired and lives at Woods Bay.

His sons, Greg and David, bought the business in 1997. One of their fondest recollections at the store is their father's first $1,000 day, around Christmas 1970.

"Dad came home and there was a little chatter around the table," he said with a grin.

"I did 29 prescriptions a day when I opened," Jerry recalled. "When I got up to 50 a day, I was overwhelmed."

Today, 450 prescriptions are sent out the door during a typical workday at Stoick Drug.

"It evolved, it didn't explode," Jerry said. "What Greg has done in here is way beyond what I expected."

Greg and David both worked a bit for their father while juggling sports participation at Flathead High School, then both finished their pharmacist training at The University of Montana's pharmacy college.

Greg arrived there by way of a couple of years of pre-medicine classes at Carroll College, then a couple of years off while deciding on a physician or pharmacist career. He opted for pharmacy and got his UM degree in 1980. He worked in the family store and at the IGA Grocery pharmacy in Hungry Horse for a couple of years, then headed for Anchorage, Alaska, in 1984, where he ran a pharmacy and started a family over 13 years' time.

MEANWHILE, David had earned his pharmacy degree and was working for his father in Stoick Drug during the years when Jerry began thinking about retirement.

When the time finally came in 1997, Greg moved back from Alaska and went into partnership with David to buy Stoick Drug. They ran the store together for 10 years before Greg bought out David in January 2007.

David still is working as a pharmacist for Frank's Drug in Libby, the shop owned by Frank Fahland, a former intern for Jerry Stoick.

The Stoick brothers were just a year into their ownership when they decided to open up the wall between their pharmacy and the newly vacant leased space to the west and make it a homegrown display for their full-size grizzly, black bear, elk, caribou, mule deer, king salmon, rainbow trout and other mounts.

"We were excited to open up this room because it makes it look like a Montana store," said Greg, an avid hunter. "We don't want to be a sterile box store. This is Montana. We want to give what the people want."

Now the daughter of David and Greg's sister, Judy Stoick, has joined the business as the family's first doctor of pharmacy - and a respectable hunter and fisherman in her own right.

Kim Murray, too, started her higher education at Carroll College, then fast-tracked into UM's College of Pharmacy to finish in 5 1/2 years before coming home to work for her uncle this winter.

Her extra year of education beyond what her uncles were required to complete were filled with "rotations," giving her hands-on experience at a hospital, outpatient clinic, the state crime laboratory, geriatric care, long-term care and administration.

Stoick Drug was her choice to start her career because, she said, "this environment was home, this was family. It's so nice to be able to come home and work with my family."

A straight-A student in college, Murray is enthusiastic about the work but loves the people it involves, from those she consults with at Heritage Place to the customers who walk in, to her fellow workers. "It's so nice to love to come to work every day," she said.

AND THAT place is - and will remain, as far as the family is concerned - a hometown, independent pharmacy.

"You can walk right up here, pull into the front door, and get your prescription right now," Greg said. "There's rarely any waiting."

At the big-box stores and large national-chain pharmacies, corporate policy keeps the customer waiting so they wander through the store making more purchases, he said, and typically keeps the pharmacists themselves behind a glass window and away from customers.

"We know their name, we greet them, we have an open pharmacy counter," he said. "You can walk up and talk to a pharmacist."

He praised his staff pharmacist, Josh Stillo, his technicians, Debby Franck and Krista Giordano, and the rest of his dozen workers who keep Stoick Drug a personal, friendly place.

Insurance and other third-party payers, mail-order prescriptions, Medicare Part D and a raft of government policies are biting big chunks out of the independent pharmacy's ability to maintain that local, personalized service, Greg said.

But he's not going to stop offering customer services that ease a patient's pharmaceutical relationship between the doctor and the drugstore, or stop deliveries that make a difference to so many customers who can't get out on their own, or stop advising them on how they can save money by buying a higher-dosage pill for the same price as lower-dosage pills, then cutting them in half.

He's found people appreciate such ethics.

"Word of mouth is always your best advertising," he said. "We have many longtime customers, and we're very good at keeping the people who want to come.

"We've made it this far because we will go the extra mile."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com