The Sunnyvale Sun

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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Medicine Man: Pharmacist George "Buzz'' Armanini ran the Sunnyvale Clinic Pharmacy for 40 years. Now that the pharmacy is closed, Armanini isn't sure what he will do, but he says he won't miss working 14-hour days.

Pharmacy reaches its expiration date

By Stephen Baxter

The Sunnyvale Clinic Pharmacy in Camino Medical Center closed for the last time on April 3, and patients will face challenges finding some of the creams and ointments that owner George "Buzz" Armanini made there. It was the last pharmacy in Sunnyvale and one of few in the South Bay that made compounds from its own formulas.

The shop is closing because 301 Old San Francisco Road will be vacated this summer, and many of the doctors are moving to a new medical center in Mountain View. Prescription files have been transferred to Walgreens drugstore at 105 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale.

Camino Medical Center staff and patients say they will miss Armanini, 67, and not just for the quick service he provided.

Using his own tetracycline and other ingredients, Armanini mixed "Stanford Mouthwash," a canker sore remedy favored by cancer patients. He also "punched," or filled, anti-Malaria capsules for families traveling to India. No pharmacy but his sold the pills based on a child's weight, Armanini says, because there's no money in it. He could choose which drugs to discount.

"My attitude is, I'm part of this clinic, and I'll make what the docs tell me to make."

The pharmacy started more than 50 years ago, but Armanini's bloodline traces to some well-known South Bay physicians and pharmacists.

His father, Albert, co-owned a drugstore at Murphy and Washington avenues in Sunnyvale in the 1930s. His uncle, Lawrence, owned a pharmacy in Mountain View. Another uncle, George B. Armanini, was a noted surgeon and a co-founder of Sunnyvale Clinic in the 1950s, which later became Camino Medical Group. For the younger George, the nickname "Buzz" came at 5 years old: He would say his name was George Armanini, and people would ask jokingly, "the famous doctor?"

His father's pharmacy moved to the 200 block of Murphy Avenue, which was razed under eminent domain the late '70s to pave a Macy's parking lot, Armanini says.

At age 15, he started working in the family's pharmacies. "I would fix things, deliver things--in the old days it was a good job for young kids.''

Armanini graduated from the University of California, San Francisco in 1968, and eventually took over his father's Sunnyvale Clinic Pharmacy.

Customers aren't allowed beyond the pharmacy's counter and could not see its cramped aisles stacked with drugs. Armanini's windowless back office is cramped to the point where his swivel chair can roll only a foot in each direction. A large computer screen sits atop some battered white drawers, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase holds volumes like Handbook of Chemistry and Physics and American Drug Index.

"You'll never see a library like this in a pharmacy, " says Armanini, wearing glasses, a short-sleeved shirt and black socks and sandals. He says he realized in pharmacy school that he could never learn everything about drugs, but he could learn where to find information.

Fifty years of photographs and cartoons are pinned to a dusty bulletin board in the office, and a stereo and a large pair of headphones hang above his desk. CDs are filed behind his chair, hinting at his other life. He owns Century Stereo, a home electronics store across from Westgate Mall in San Jose. He called that business his first love.

Armanini the pharmacist employed three full-time and two part-time people, including a deliveryman. The shop's strength was fast service for patients leaving doctor's appointments.

Kathryn Schantell, a 55-year-old legal secretary, waited for a prescription on the store's final day. She had been a customer for decades.

"I have to go to the big chains now, and they're so slow," she says. "I liked being able to come here because the doctor's here, plus it's homey.''

The change comes as Camino Medical Group is shuffling its facilities. Many doctors will move to its new Mountain View medical center at 701 E. El Camino Real. A new Camino pharmacy is expected to open there, and Armanini will help in the transition. He also may do some work for the Walgreen's that holds his prescription records.

With the exception of Drug Barn on E. El Camino Real, all of Sunnyvale's 14 drug stores are national chains.

Armanini blames mail-order drug operators and pharmacy billing managers for independent drugstores' demise. He saw the rise of medical insurance companies in the last 20 years, which changed many parts of his business, but he tried to craft his compounds to fit patients' insurance plans.

He says making common drugs is often not difficult if you have the ingredients and formulas, but it's a dying science. Pharmacies once made drugs that promoted hair growth, for example, but drug companies snared use patents to make drugs such as Propecia. Drug companies then enjoined independent pharmacists from making generic versions.

Pharmaceutical companies have deflected accusations of greed by saying they pay for research that leads to new drugs.

"In the old days, pharmacies made things," Armanini says. "Now it's kind of like a lost art."

The Armanini line of pharmacists will also be interrupted, as Buzz Armanini advised his two sons against it.

"I couldn't guarantee a future," he says. "The writing was on the wall."