With so many giant pharmacies in the area, why would a pharmacist go independent?
Sonya Frausto explains. She is the owner and pharmacist at Ten Acres Pharmacy, which opened in August next door to Taylor’s Kitchen on Freeport Boulevard.
Sonya Frausto, owner and pharmacist of the new Ten Acres Pharmacy that
opened in August, focuses on customizing care for her patients.
Frausto’s friendly “hello” greets visitors. A Sacramento native, she’s a graduate of Florin High School and Sacramento State University with a bachelor’s degree in biology and Spanish. She earned her doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Southern California. After years of working in big pharmacies, she managed to go independent.
Frausto’s dream was to customize care for her patients without the layers of bureaucracy. She tells a story about a young mother who came to her in the big pharmacy with a prescription for amoxicillin for her child. It cost $33.
The mother could not afford it, and she left without the medicine.
If Frausto had her own pharmacy, she could have sold the medicine for $6 and still made $1.
Ten Acres Pharmacy is located at
2930 Freeport Blvd.
Ten Acres’ walls are bright white, and the shelves are stocked with colorful boxes and bottles of nonprescription merchandise from local small businesses. Just inside the door on the left is a table with neat stacks of brochures. The medicines are behind the counter.
Frausto wants to be a resource to help patients understand what medicines they need and why. She wants to provide information that extends to mental health, school and disposal of old medicines. She’s working to secure a disposal bin, which requires layers of permits and inspections.
As a full-service pharmacy, Ten Acres offers vaccines and birth control options as well as medicines. Frausto recommends that people get their flu vaccine in October so it will still be good in January and February.
Ten Acres is not the first pharmacy in the neighborhood, but it’s now the only independent one except for the Land Park Pharmacy by the zoo.
Longtime neighbors may remember the Highland Park Pharmacy on 24th Street at Castro Way.
Frausto named the pharmacy after the historical custom of 10-acre plots that fanned out from the railyard when the neighborhood was developed.
An added dimension at the pharmacy is a doctor’s office. Dr. Thomas Anker, D.O., takes walk-in patients on a cash-only business. Dr. Anker is fluent in Spanish and Chinese as well as English.
At home in Midtown, Frausto is the mother of two teens. Her daughter is a junior in the HISP program at McClatchy High School, and her son is in seventh grade at Sutter Middle School. Frausto’s husband is a respiratory therapist at Mercy/Dignity General Hospital.
For more information, visit tenacrespharmacy.com or call 916 942-9575.