By ANDREW SIMPSON
Ward Media Staff Reporter
CASHMERE — At the west end of Cottage Avenue stands a landmark business that’s finally made its way back into the hands of the family that established it. Dave Doane purchased the pharmacy with his own name on the wall last year, and came home in August to reclaim the family name from the owner his father sold it to decades ago. It’s been in business the whole time, and the previous owner never even changed the name.
But now Doane’s Valley Pharmacy belongs once again to the Doane family.
Back to his roots
Doane sits down at a table on the south end of the soda fountain inside the store. He was about to make a move for the north end of the counter, but then he noticed a regular there about to order and said to himself, “Oh, they like to go out the back way.” Turning, he says, “Let’s not block their path.”
There’s a Jory Dean sundae — vanilla ice cream, hot fudge and peanuts in layers — for only $6.50 right at your fingertips. But hearing Doane in his element, you know what the real scoop is. A hometown pharmacy stays open as long as this one by knowing which entrance their customers prefer. In the distance, you can hear Doug behind the pharmacy counter say “Hi, Josephine” to a customer when she’s still a good 30 feet away.
This is what it’s like to run a place where you know you’re likely going to see every single one of your customers at least once a month. They don’t just see the ones who come in, either. Dave says within minutes of sitting for an interview that his team delivers medicine to long-term care customers from East Wenatchee to Leavenworth.
Although he’s a familiar face in town, being the son and nephew of the Doane brothers, Ron and Wayne, who bought this place in 1953, he’s actually only been in the store himself since last August. He’d been on the other side of the mountains, where he met his wife so many years ago and worked as a pharmacist in Kirkland. But Cashmere is home, and the family name called out to him.
In fact, Doane touches on that for a minute. Dave had heard about the digitization of the Cashmere Valley Record, but when he’s informed that he can search for things online about himself as he was growing up in Cashmere, he seems excited. “I played a lot of sports,” he tells us, and upon looking him up in the database as the subject of this month’s entry on businesses over 40 years old, the archives confirm his glory days as a center for the Bulldogs. He has the height of a basketball player, and the Record has, well, the record of it.
As he reflects on his return to the valley — going from the history of his family to how much he values his staff now, from the pieced-together records of sales of the business to what seems like the best decision he’s made in years, coming back and buying it himself, Doane finally turns to the present.
The people behind the counter
To keep himself focused, he answers the question of what keeps people coming in to Doane’s for their pharmacy needs, rather than one at a medical center or in a supermarket. Doane is careful not to step on toes. “I’ve been in the big chain stores around the valley, and they’re really good people that are working there,” says Doane. “But, I spent 35 years in Kirkland, and there’s plexiglass,” he says, making a motion like a wall in front of him, “and no access to really talk to people. We’re personable. We work hard and play hard, and we’ve got a lot of really good people here who work with a smile on their face. We take really good care of people.”
Doane has more people on staff here than you might see in most busy pharmacies, and he jokes about paying too many people. But he goes back to the wait times at the chain stores: “I’m not going to be critical of them, because they’re not managed by pharmacists. It’s tough, pharmacy is hard.”
This is where Doane is gentle when talking about his counterparts in other stores, knowing that other pharmacists really care for their customers as well, but aren’t given a hometown setting like his.
“[Chain stores are] businesspeople — they put the pharmacy in the back of the store so you buy stuff on the way in and you buy stuff on the way out to get your prescription filled. They don’t put money in the pharmacy, it’s almost a loss leader. The people that are here, almost every one of them, grew up here, went to Cashmere schools. The pharmacist that’s working in long-term care started out as a fountain girl, became a pharmacy assistant, became a pharmacy technician, went to Washington State [University], became a pharmacist, came back, and here she is.”
And Doane’s assistants, techs, and pharmacists work closely with the folks they feel like they share the medical field with; doctors and nurses advise them and supervise patients coming right here into the pharmacy on Cottage Avenue for monthly injections aside from just plain old vaccinations. That coincidentally happens as Doane is explaining it, with a patient who lives in an adult family home and comes in for a monthly injection — Dave noticed her as she came in.
A fixture in the community
Knowing his regulars could have something to do with his pedigree. Bouncing back to family history, Doane says, “Grandpa raised chickens in one of the valleys above us. [Uncle] Wayne raised his kids in Sunnyslope. My parents, Ron and Carol, raised us all right here. I’m the youngest of four, three sons and a daughter for my folks, and all three boys are pharmacists. My son’s a pharmacist. Maybe someday he’ll be back here.”
The place was out of the family almost as much as it was in. It went from just plain Valley Pharmacy to Doane’s in 1960. Then Wayne left the business in 1970, and Ron sold the business to Ben Ellis in 1991. Ellis had it for 33 years, and when the opportunity to buy it back into the family came up, Dave Doane’s wife reminded him: “You know, it’s always sunny over there.”
When the interview pauses to gather the team for a photo for this interview, Doane says the high school kids keep the soda fountain “afloat,” as it were. “They come here after school, and you know, once in a while if it’s not too busy, the crew will ask me if I want some ice cream. I’ve been known to partake.”
During the time it takes for the photographer to get everyone facing the same direction, Doane has reminisced about the kids sitting up while their folks were in bed and reading the police blotter in the Cashmere Valley Record. “Bike was stolen on Mission Creek, bike was found in the creek a mile away,” he recalls.
The photo taken, Doane sits back down for one more question: What is the most important part of his mission here at the pharmacy?
A legacy defined
“Keeping the store here for this town. Independent pharmacies are really under the gun. And this is a fixture in this community. Ben kept it going strong, and my goal is to keep it strong, and maybe add a little to it, so when I’m ready to retire, someone can pick up where I left off.
“My personal expertise in pharmacy, I don’t think, is the key to this business. I think a lot of people are nostalgic [who] remember my parents. There are a lot of people that I grew up with, who now, I’m taking care of their grandchildren. The ‘Hi, Josephine’ when she comes in, that comes to these people naturally.”
Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media
