Damaged in Raleigh protests, CVS reopens to happy customers. ‘I’m dang near doing flips.’

Chenetha Eason burst through the front door, danced across the brand-new carpet, threw her arms wide and grabbed a tube of toothpaste as if were a gold nugget.

For the first time since May, she could walk across Fayetteville Street to the CVS and buy a soft drink on her lunch break, or some Chex Mix, or some AA batteries —all precious luxuries in a boarded-up downtown.

This week, downtown Raleigh’s only pharmacy pulled the plywood off its windows and welcomed customers back inside — a grand reopening that took on unusual meaning in a city still licking its wounds. Rarely does a chain drug store generate such excitement.

“I’m dang-near doing flips,” said Eason, who works for Raleigh city government. “Imaginary flips, because we’re too old.”

“We’re just across the street,” said her friend, Rofonda Young, “and to be able to come in here again, it’s like Christmas in February. Look at this new carpet!”

‘We had to come back’

On May 30, hundreds of peaceful protesters gathered downtown in the afternoon and called for police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. But when the sun set, some protesters clashed with police who wore riot gear, fired tear gas canisters and shot rubber bullets into the crowd.

Nearly every downtown window was smashed at the ground level, and looters broke into the CVS, tearing the store apart and lighting fires on the sidewalk downtown. For months, downtown sat largely abandoned, its only life coming from the murals painted on plywood boards.

Next door, Kimbrell’s Furniture store permanently closed, its storefront showing all plywood. Across the street, the Anchor Bar’s familiar blue neon is buried under boards.

But after eight months gone dark, the red CVS sign glowed like the beam from a lighthouse.

“We looked around to see what else was in the area and who could do what we do, and the answer was nobody,” said Dana Ray, district leader. “So we had to come back.”

April is back behind the counter

For many, a reopened CVS means the return of April Gorski, who has worked behind the counter of its pharmacy since 2005. The Fayetteville Street store is only open 54 hours a week, and until her son was born four years ago, Gorski regularly worked all 54 of them.

“I could tell you a lot of our customers’ first names, and a lot of their birthdays,” she said. “It was to the point that you could call and I wouldn’t have to look at the computer. I just knew.”

(As a downtown resident, I have gone to Gorski for prescriptions since 2007. Not only does she know my son’s birthday without having to think about it, she would sometimes toss me my medications from behind the counter when she saw me standing at the back of a long line.)

The Fayetteville Streeet CVS is one of the chain’s smaller stores, and it has no parking lot. Many of its pharmacy customers walk two blocks from the Sir Walter Apartments, which provides affordable housing for senior citizens. It is common to see homeless people buy food with spare change, or to stand in line behind pharmacy customers carrying their belongings in multiple plastic bags, fumbling with a variety of ID cards at the counter.

Without the CVS, their nearest option for prescriptions was Glenwood South or Person Street — a short drive by car, which many lack, or a 30-minute walk otherwise. Some seniors just drop in for conversation, not needing anything in particular.

Retiree Harold Stuart wandered in Friday looking for the magazine rack, where he likes to buy collectors’ editions. He chose instead just to gab with the manager, whom he knew by name. Standing by the batteries, he recalled working in The News & Observer mail room between 1973 and 1976, and how then-publisher Frank Daniels Jr. always called him his best-ever worker.

This sort of exchange is common at the downtown CVS.

“I’m like a bad check,” Stuart said. “I keep coming back.”

As he exited onto a rainy Fayetteville Street, he wondered how many more will follow.

This story was originally published February 5, 2021 at 1:53 PM.