As the 116-year-old Central Drug Store in the Excelsior closes, memories abound

Love what you read? Love that it was free?

Mission Local will never have a paywall. All our articles are free for everyone, always. Help us keep it that way — donate to our end-of-year fundraiser to make Mission Local free for your neighbors.

Donate today!

Almost every day, someone starts crying in the aisles of Central Drug Store, says owner Jerry Tonelli.

He gets it. The drugstore has been here, on the corner of Mission and Santa Rosa for 116 years, barely changing while the rest of the city has transformed at a rapid pace. 

Despite Central Drug’s legacy business status, the landmark is more than an Excelsior institution. Generations have found love, family and friendship behind the time-warped counters of Central Drug.

After nearly six-score years of operation, five owners and 60-plus years in the same family, Tonelli is ready to retire, saying goodbye to generations of customers, his family’s legacy and the business that has continually brought people together. 

As it prepares to close on July 15, its owners and customers are feeling nostalgic for all that has transpired at Central Drug: life, love and even death. Tonelli’s father died on the job. It is love, however, that played the biggest role in its history.  

Tonelli’s parents met and fell in love behind the drugstore counters in the 1940s, back when Central Drug was a one-stop-shop that sold everything from medicine to liquor and cigarettes.

The store had a soda fountain, a phone booth and roasted nuts that you could buy by the half-pound. Tonelli’s mother worked as a clerk, and his father, back from the service, was training to become a pharmacist.  By 1947, the pair were married and, by the mid-1950s, Jerry Tonelli was born — the fourth of seven kids.

In 1965, Tonelli’s father, Dino, bought the place from the Divencenzis and made it the Tonelli family business. Tonelli’s sister Sandy, was the second Tonelli to meet her match at the drugstore  — notably, Divencenzi’s nephew Dave, who had stayed on as a clerk. 

Cupid struck again in the 1970s, when Tonelli’s coworker and family friend, Roy Hendrickson, started as a high school clerk and met another clerk from a different high school, Stephanie. The pair married in 1979. 

Tonelli did not meet his wife behind the counter, but it was pretty close. Her father, a physician, had his office across the street. Their fathers were friends, and his sister introduced the two, making the connection from across the Excelsior corridor. 

Although there is no trace of where the phone booth and soda fountain stood, one thing the store hasn’t changed is its family feel, a place where neighbors meet. 

For years, Central Drug has operated with three employees, neighborhood good faith and IOUs. The kind of place that would rely on the Round Table pizza across the street for after-hours pickups and, at other times, where employees would personally deliver medication free of charge.

“He knows he’s violated HIPPA 5,000 times,” says Diana Assereto, a third-generation Central Drug customer, in reference to the federal act that sets scrupulous rules on the sharing of personal medical information. But it’s all love here, Assereto continues. 

The years of ownership are documented in family scrapbook-style back walls that are filled with photos and Christmas cards. The heights of various Tonellis are marked on the upstairs office door frame.  

Regulars have been going to Central Drug since the beginning, although the beginning for each is different. For the Tonellis, it was in the 1940s. For some customers, even earlier. Many long-time residents have fed the store with generations of customers. 

One 70-year-old customer told Tonelli that she had been a regular almost since birth; her mother stopped by the drugstore to pick up something when bringing her home from the hospital. 

On any given day, most of the long-time customers are still there, picking things up, shedding a few tears and talking about the old days. 

Perhaps Central Drug’s longest customer is “Miss” Ethel Wallace, 94. Wallace has been a customer since she was a little girl, back in the days when she would accompany her father to the drugstore. 

While chatting with Tonelli about the impending closure, Wallace can’t help but cry. “It’s what I do,” she said. 

On a recent afternoon, a mother and her young son wander the aisles of drugs and novelties, their hair dyed a matching shade of blue-green. The mother is picking up medicine for her sister, and Tonelli asks about her most recent hospital visit. Her son, a fourth-generation Central Drug customer, picks out a pack of plastic army figurines. 

“Everything you ever needed was right here,” says Jim Hodgins, a relative newcomer in the sense that his family has only been coming to Central Drug for two generations. He’s been watching his favorite restaurants and stores close down, and this one is hitting hard. “This was one of the last ones.”