Today you’ll meet an Syrian drug dealing pilot who lives in South Australia's Clare Valley.
He’s of Syrian descent, he’s flies a plane and he sells drugs - but the legal kind. Richard ( El-koo- ree) Elkhoury has been a pharmacist in the Clare Valley for 21 years. He's the managing director of Clare Pharmacy Group, Board of directors of Country and Outback Health, Chair of the Yorketown Medical Service and a sponsor of the Children’s charity, the Variety Bash.
When he's not running his pharmacies in the mid-north, he's in his Cessna 182 flying across parts of regional South Australia visiting patients.
In this episode, Richard talks about the difficulties of running a pharmacy in the regions, because it's really hard to get and retain staff, and not just in pharmacy, but across the board in the health industry. He has devoted the last two decades of his life to giving regional people, or trying to give regional people the same health care as those in the cities, but it hasn't been easy.
He also talks about the children's charity, the Variety Bash, where he gets to fly his plane and drive his pink ice cream truck. But before we get underway, I just wanted to mention that I've been pronouncing Richard's last name as Elkhoury for years, but it's actually not correct. There's a story in that.