NEWS CHRONICLE PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Marisol Garcia is the newest pharmacist at Medicap in Toledo, and the Marshalltown native is proud to be serving the area.

Marisol Garcia, a Marshalltown native and 2009 MHS graduate, took a bit of an unconventional path toward becoming a pharmacist, first attending Iowa State University and majoring in psychology as an undergrad student.

“It took me a little while to go back. I did a few different jobs with my undergraduate degree, and then I decided that I really like the medical field, and I missed learning about human anatomy, biology and chemistry.”

She came to the Toledo Medicap Pharmacy, which is owned and operated by Derek Townsend, on a rotation as a pharmacy student at the University of Iowa, and Townsend almost immediately offered a job about four years ago. At the time, she could only work weekends, holidays and in the summer, but that was good enough for him.

He left the door open for a full-time position in the future if Marisol, her husband Hector and their two children decided to return to the area, and that’s exactly what ultimately happened. She started full-time about a year ago, although she noted that she’s still often referred to as “the new person” even now.

Garcia had once been a young pharmacy technician at Hy-Vee in Marshalltown, so coming back to the field — which, at the time, she had indicated she wasn’t interested in — was something of a full circle moment for her.

“I feel like this was supposed to be my path in the beginning, but I took a little bit of a detour and got there eventually,” she said. “But I’m really happy I did this. Most people are really scared to go back to school as a full-time mom, but I think it was probably the best decision I ever made.”

In particular, she loves working for an independently owned Medicap branch now that some have broken off from the larger corporate organization, with Townsend also owning the locations in Gladbrook and Brooklyn.

“As a pharmacist, I’m able to counsel and provide medications out in those small rural areas, including this one,” she said. “We know patients and we care for them. We’re trying to move more towards clinical services now that aren’t provided as much with larger retail pharmacies, unfortunately.”

With the diversity of the Tama-Toledo population, Medicap always has at least one staff person in the building who can speak Spanish, and they’ll continue to evolve more with individuals from different parts of the world moving here.