Many believe that things in life have a way of coming around full circle and that moment happened for Yorkville resident Sandra Marcum, 69, on Friday.
“I’ve been working here now 48 years to the day,” Marcum said as she stood behind the counter of the Jewel-Osco pharmacy at 1952 W. Galena Blvd. in Aurora. “Today is my last day.”
Wearing a lab coat adorned with multiple service pins and a pink sash proclaiming “I’m Retired” across her shoulders, Marcum, who was born and raised in Aurora, reflected on a career that stretched nearly five decades and produced hundreds of loyal customers.
“People have been coming in all week and saying their goodbyes. It’s time for me to step aside, but at the same time it’s also kind of sad,” Marcum said during her final day of work.
“I started on Feb. 23 in 1976,” she said. “I was married at the time and my husband graduated and he was applying for law school and I needed a job. I put in an application at several different places – mainly office work – and I had two calls. Someone called and said there was an opening at Osco.”
Marcum said she “didn’t know what I’d do at the store” and when she learned the job was for a pharmacy technician she quickly told her future employer, “I know nothing about that.”
“‘You don’t have to’ what was they told me on the phone,” Marcum recalled. “They said they would train me on-the-job. The other place I applied to also called me the same day and offered me more money, but I’d worked in an office before and thought this other thing might be fun.”
Marcum said she was hired on the spot and became the pharmacy’s first full-time technician.
Her duties have included managing things from a technical aspect which began back in the day using an electric typewriter.
“We started with the electric typewriter, we stamped numbers on the prescriptions and people were able to pay for them up front,” Marcum recalled. “There have been many computer systems that have since been put in that I had to learn each time. There’s been advancements for pharmacy specialists with testing that I went through and then you have more responsibilities here including training new technicians and doing the schedules.”
Marcum said her work on a daily basis involved “doing nearly everything from taking in prescriptions, filling them, waiting on customers and sending things out.”
“Everything is checked first by a pharmacist but there is a lot of responsibility,” she said. “COVID was very trying because our store would go out and do all the clinics and set up in an empty building. I wasn’t trained to administer shots but there were other techs that were trained to do that.”
Roald Haase, 79, of Aurora said he was a longtime customer who came to know Marcum as a reliable person who knew him and his family’s health history.
“This goes back at least 25 years. She knows me by name because my name is odd enough that people recognize it as well as my wife Laurel,” Haase said. “It’s nice to see somebody that you know who is somewhat aware of your past medical situation and medical needs. Her job takes a certain amount of tact and a certain amount of intensity that goes along with that.”
Aadil Vhora, staff pharmacist at the same Jewel-Osco, described her “as sort of a mother that looks after all of us here.”
“It’s emotional for her and for me,” Vhora said on Friday. “Even though I’ve been here less than a year, it feels like many more – like 30 years that I’ve been with her.
“She’s like our mother to us,” Vhora said. “She keeps everyone in check, even the manager himself, even though she’s a tech. She makes sure everything is done on time. We know that things are going to be done right.”
Vhoro said that Marcum is great with customers.
“The most important thing is her characteristics of going above and beyond,” Vhora said. “Everybody that comes to the pharmacy here knows Sandy. She’s built a relationship with customers and kept them coming back.”
Marcum admits working at the pharmacy evolved into something more than a paycheck.
“It turns out its more than just a job, it’s family,” she said. “Everybody is family. You know the customer’s family, you know what’s going on, there is a window into a lot of people’s lives and there are a lot of customers that are still here when I started.
“I always try to put on a happy face and everybody gets into personal things – new restaurants to try, whatever,” she said. “I worked with a pharmacist here for about 35 years who just retired and you could finish each other’s sentences.”
Like many facing retirement, Marcum said she is looking forward to spending more time with family.
“I have two grandchildren I hope to spend more time with and another grandmother is babysitting a 1-year-old five days a week and I want to steal some of that time,” she said. “I feel I’ve done my time. I started working at 15 and have been working ever since. I’m not as fast on computers as the kids coming here and it’s time to go and let another group come in.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
