(WGHP) -- Swannanoa and Black Mountain are two of the hardest hit areas by Helene. If you look beneath a thick coating of dirt and past the towering piles of debris, there are people who haven’t taken a day off since the storm hit almost a month ago on Sept. 28. Among them are two pharmacies that both reopened within days of Helene hitting their hometowns harder than anyone expected. “We were even handwriting some labels at first,” Taylor Jones said. Jones and Jonna Munroe own HealthRidge Pharmacy in Black Mountain. After the storm, they knew they had to get medicine to people in their community. “We did that for a couple days with our two-year-old here in the dark, working off two screens with lanterns,” Jones said. Their work, amid historic devastation around them, was critical. “I remember someone showed up on their bike that Saturday because they had run out of their blood-thinner medication that’s for stroke prevention,” Jones said. Their friend Dave Price was just six miles away in Swannanoa doing the same work at PSA Pharmacy. “We were back on the 29th. We didn’t have power, water, computers, handwriting labels and working by flashlight,” Price said. Jessica Colley is a regular customer at PSA Pharmacy and says Price went above and beyond after the storm for all the people with stories like hers. “We heard something in the trees, and it sounded like a freight train coming ... When we were able to safely get out, we drove down the road and there was a full-on river across the street from where we live,” Colley said. She knew Swannanoa was forever changed by Helene. She and her husband ventured out to check on someone and stopped near PSA Pharmacy. “We saw Dave, and we were like, 'What are you doing here? Why are you here?' And he said, 'Well, I gotta get the shop open,'” she said. That’s what he did nd has done with his team every day since. “It’s a massive tragedy for this area,” Price said. For the trio of local pharmacists, the mission was to make sure no more lives were lost because of going without medicine even if their customers couldn’t pay. “A lot of folks were paying if they could. If they couldn’t, we just let them have it. Folks that had a little extra would leave money to cover the next person if they didn’t have it,” Price said. While the chain pharmacies like Ingles across the street were flooded or others couldn’t operate without power, the two locally-owned pharmacies took in hundreds of people with nowhere to go, including a transplant patient. “He was in his 20s. A transplant patient who needed his mycophenolate, his prednisone. His pharmacy was flooded, so we were able to onboard him and get him his medicine so that he didn’t go without,” Munroe said. It’s evidence of the concept of mountain strong. “They know us. They love us. They care about us,” said Colley of the local pharmacists. “They’re your friends and your neighbors, so you’re here for them,” Price said. To help people unable to afford their medications, there is a GoFundMe to create a fund that will benefit several local pharmacies with patients struggling to afford their medications.