Pharmacy tech and admired mentor marks 30 years at Walgreens

Thirty years ago, Dina Huerta took a chance on a part-time job as a cashier at a Walgreens in Arizona. Her best friend worked there, so she thought it would be fun. What started as a part-time job quickly became a full-time passion, as Huerta became a pharmacy technician.

She became a mentor to another generation of pharmacy technicians and built lasting relationships with the elderly patients who lived in the retirement community where her store was located.

“I realized I had an impact on patients when, for example, an elderly person without a caretaker gets flustered and I just take a few extra minutes with them to explain something” she says. “You realize that sometimes people just need a little a little bit of extra time.”

Recently, she’s taken the same mentor role at a microfulfillment center, overseeing the filling of hundreds of prescriptions in a day. As she says, she considers her pharmacy technician certification a “license to protect,” and she passes on that same safety-first philosophy to her coworkers.

“I feel very privileged to be able to mentor them because I had the best mentor,” Huerta says. “My former pharmacy manager taught me so much. Every single day he taught us something new. And now it’s like, ‘OK, now you need to teach others.’”

To learn more about Huerta’s story, watch the video below. It’s part of our series that shines a spotlight on our pharmacy team members for American Pharmacist Month. You can check out more of our pharmacy team members’ stories here.