If you want to know something about Point Loma Shelter Island Drug, check out the recently remodeled store’s floors.
“Look at the concrete; you see the different patterns?” asked drug store co-owner Michael Saad, who, along with wife Andrea, operates the pharmacy at 1105 Rosecrans St. and a sister site, Pt. Loma Cabrillo Drug, at 955 Catalina Blvd. “As (the store) has been renovated, (the floor) has changed.”
The business has been there “more than a century, the records don’t go beyond that,” Michael Saad said. “There’s where the first pharmacy was, up to the pillar,” he said, pointing down. “From there, we expanded into this second section before expanding (next door) into the (Harbor Town) pub. So it’s like the history is in the concrete in the floor. The whole idea (of rehabbing) was to just bring the history out of the concrete and create a new look.”
Saad noted the pharmacy now has “a better flow” and is more open and inviting throughout offering parking in the back, as always.
Part pharmacy, part gift shop and all local, Point Loma Shelter Island Drug is continuing its winning way of serving the Peninsula community, as it has for a century plus.
“Our big thing,” Saad said, “is personal, friendly service. Not many stores are like this. You don’t get that from the chains.”
Pointing out they “know most of our customers by name,” Saad said he takes care of his customers, whether they need special packing or services or have special needs. “We do free deliveries in the area,” Saad said.
Regarding his remodel, begun after Mother’s Day last year and completed in November, Saad said, “We used to have the multi-purpose pharmacy in that back corner with gifts and books. We decided we needed more space for the pharmacy, because that’s 70 percent of the business.” So the Saads “changed it up,” bringing the pharmacy up front and shifting gifts and other items around.
“It was a challenge,” admitted Saad, noting he “increased the home care division,” bringing in lift chairs, wheelchairs and walkers. He also brought in lots of unique gift items, “not the regular kind of gifts you find everywhere.”
Saad also introduced new lines of greeting cards. He also kept a section for medical shoes for people suffering from neuropathy or diabetes.
“Those are shoes with special insoles and support to prevent blistering and are especially good for people who are on their feet a lot,” Saad said.
Saad and his family are native South Africans and moved their clan to San Diego at the end of the 1980s. But they had to move in stages.
“We came as a family,” he said. “But you were only allowed to take a certain amount of money each year. You couldn’t just pack up and leave. So it took us five years.”
Saad and his father bought their pharmacy from Leo Volz and his family, who had owned it for years.
“We caught him (Volz) at the right time,” Saad said. “We made him an offer, bought him out, and we’ve been going ever since.” Historic photos of the Volz pharmacy during the Peninsula’s formative years still hang on the walls of Point Loma Shelter Island Drug, reminding folks of the way things were.
Saad said coming to the United States was a big transition, but he added that his family had owned a similar neighborhood pharmacy in South Africa.
“We knew everything is location, and we liked this location; it’s a community,” Saad said as customers, friends with one another, stood a few feet away sharing conversation while waiting to pick up prescriptions.
Point Loma Shelter Island Drug offers customers other amenities, like free cups of Starbucks and wi-fi.
“We want people to come in here and relax,” said Saad. “That’s the kind of atmosphere we’re trying to create.”