Priscilla Richardson

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Hypnosis to stop smoking. Vaccinations. Cholesterol screening.

You can get a lot more than just your prescription at the DownHome Pharmacy. Pharmacists Tim and Allison Gillespie Lucas have brought the old-time community drug store, where people would meet and the pharmacist was a respected part of small-town life, to the medical building off Alternate U.S. 220.

Tim Lucas, 35, has wanted to own an old-time community drug store for a long time. He got hooked on pharmacy back in Crozet, where his father was a nursing home administrator. When deep snow would keep his father's staff away from work, he and his two brothers were commandeered into kitchen duty. Then one day he shadowed the home's pharmacist and saw his life's work. He worked as a pharmacy technician while attending high school, college and the Medical College of Virginia.

Lucas acquired more than his professional degree at MCV. There he met his wife, Allison Gillespie, a Botetourt native and Lord Botetourt High School graduate. She comes from a family with two other sisters, one an accountant and the other also a pharmacist married to a pharmacist.

For the first few years of their marriage, jobs were scarce. Today, jobs are plentiful and it's pharmacists who are scarce. But back then they had to move to northern Virginia so each could work for CVS.

Then, "through the pharmacy association, I found a small community practice to work for in Bedford, at Green's Drugstore," Lucas recalled. "Allison had to do some transferring around to keep a job. But then the owner of Green's decided to sell to CVS, and they were closing the location where I worked. CVS wanted me to stay at another location."

However, because they were living in Cloverdale, he took a job with Kroger in Roanoke. Convinced by now that corporate life was not for him, Lucas started looking for an existing pharmacy to buy.

"I just happened to be driving past the Botetourt Athletic Club and saw a billboard saying they would build to suit. I met the developer, Dale Wilkerson, who told me he was putting offices for doctors and dentists in his building and would love to have a pharmacy. So I got to design it to fit my needs."

With foresight, he included a drive-through window. Plus room for just about anything you'd expect to find in any pharmacy, such as over-the-counter drugs and personal items. The store opened in October 2001.

The Lucases now do more than fill prescriptions. Allison Lucas works alongside her husband, doing the detail paperwork Lucas is not good at. An important service they offer is help for any person who cannot afford prescriptions.

They use a software program to generate the forms patients use to apply to major drug companies. "My father comes in and spends his time doing the applications, to check to see if they qualify for the free drugs," Tim Lucas said. He learned about this system at the Bedford Christian Free Clinic that he helped open.

The Lucases also give vaccinations and do cholesterol screening, even occasionally administer prescribed allergy shots. Other patient care programs cover asthma, cholesterol and diabetes.

"I'm certified to teach people to stop smoking, so I took a hypnosis course to help me in that," Lucas said. Even two pharmacists can't do everything, so longtime head technician Jackie Bobbitt and three other technicians help out.

And speaking of technicians, Lucas teaches at two different schools for technicians. And works within the Virginia Pharmacy Association. He helped start an Academy of New Practitioners within the association. "I am especially proud of being the only pharmacist in Virginia to have been awarded the Innovative Pharmacy Practice Award twice."

Lucas said he doesn't want innovation at home, however. He hopes child number four, due early in 2006, will be a girl to join their three daughters. Otherwise, "I'd have to paint the rooms a different color and stop buying dolls."

DownHome Pharmacy is at 40 Summers Way, Suite 101. 966-4858