MAIN STREET
A Corner Fixture
Family-run Corner Drug Co. has been operating on Main Street
in Woodland for more than 120 years
BY Tom Couzens
Corner Drug Co.
Owner: Lisa Shelley
Where: 602 Main St., Woodland,
Yolo County, (530) 662-2813
Website: cornerdrugco.com
Founded: 1897
Business: Pharmacy
Why a pharmacy?
Sara Shelley, left, and Lisa Shelley are two
of Corner Drug Co.'s four pharmacists.
PHOTO BY TOM COUZENS
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comstocksmag.com | March 2020
When Lisa Shelley, owner of Corner Drug
Co. in downtown Woodland, left Wood-
land to attend the University of the Pa-
cific in Stockton, she wanted to become
a medical technologist. “(But) during my
third year, one of my friends had gone to
the college counseling center and told
me that we had taken all the courses we
needed to get into pharmacy school,” she
says of what led her to reconsider. “My
dad always said I could be a pharmacist,
but he never pushed me.” After checking
with her counselor at UOP, she told her
father she was going to take a year off
from college before going to pharmacy
school. “During my year off, I worked at a
cannery in Woodland,” she says. “When
it wasn’t tomato season, I worked at the
drugstore filling out insurance forms.
Working in the pharmacy before going
to (pharmacy) school helped because I
knew the drug names and was up on the
latest paperwork. A lot of my classmates
struggled with that.” After graduation
from UOP’s pharmacy school, she landed
a job at Woodland Memorial Hospital
before joining Corner Drug when a phar-
macist position opened in 1979.