Helen Loennig was there the day the pharmacy in the Baker City Bi-Mart store opened.

And she’ll be there when it closes, more than 21 years later.

Loennig, a pharmacist and the pharmacy manager, said the store opened in August 2000.

Bi-Mart announced in late September that it was selling its pharmacy operations to Walgreens, and closing the pharmacies in most Bi-Mart stores.

Loennig said she and other employees learned about the closures during an emergency meeting a couple hours before Bi-Mart issued a press release.

Although the release didn’t list the 10 Bi-Mart stores that will continue to have a pharmacy, operating under the Walgreens name, Loennig said employees were told that the Baker City store wasn’t among those.

“It was kind of a shock,” Loennig said.

The nearest Bi-Mart that will continue to have a pharmacy is in Weiser, Idaho, she said.

The pharmacy at the Baker City store is slated to close Nov. 9.

Loennig, who said she plans to stay in Baker City and potentially work in one of the other local pharmacies, in the Safeway, Albertsons and Rite Aid stores, said a combination of factors contributed to a financial challenge for Bi-Mart pharmacies.

Those include rising costs for prescription drugs, limited reimbursements from insurance companies, and Oregon’s corporate activity tax which took effect in 2020, she said.

Although Bi-Mart closed its pharmacies at 13 stores in the Portland area in 2019, Loennig said the Baker City pharmacy was “doing OK” recently.

The corporate activity tax, she said, “pushed everything over the edge” for Bi-Mart’s pharmacy business.

Loennig said the Baker City pharmacy had employed seven people, but two had left recently due to the state’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.

She said Bi-Mart offered all five remaining pharmacy employees jobs elsewhere in the Baker City store.

Loennig urges local residents who have used the Bi-Mart pharmacy to be patient during what she expects will be a “really rough couple of months ahead” as the store’s prescriptions are transferred to other pharmacies.

“It will get better,” she said.

Bi-Mart’s pharmacy has processed about 1,500 prescriptions per week, Loennig said, and distributing those among other local pharmacies will present a temporary challenge.

She said pharmacists at the other Baker City stores are “doing their best.”

Loennig said that in addition to working at another local pharmacy, she is interested in potentially teaching classes at Blue Mountain Community College, which she has done in the past.