City of Eureka Community Conversations – Mariellen Jurkovich
City of Eureka Community Conversations – Mariellen Jurkovich
Meet Mariellen Jurkovich, Director of the Humboldt Patient Resource Center in Eureka, California.
Transcript
My name is Mariellen Jurkovich and I’m the Director of the Humboldt Patient Resource Center in Arcata and Eureka. HPRC has been in operation since 1999. We’re the one of the oldest dispensaries in the state of California. We do have two dispensaries, one being in Eureka, one being in Arcata. We also have where I’m standing right now, which is called The Connection.
We’ve been here for about two years, and you can find us we’re on the corner of 4th and F. There were a lot of new dispensaries opening in the area, and I felt like it was probably a disservice to HPRC if I didn’t move into Eureka also because a lot of our patients do live here.
We had an opportunity to get this building, which is the old Bank of America building. And when I came in here, I thought this will be a perfect place for the dispensary. But then I walked into The Connection –to have a wellness center has been really important to me. We had a small one before and I feel it’s important to our community to have a free, safe place for people to go and exercise and mingle and meet each other. A lot of people don’t have money to belong to health clubs, or to go to yoga, or Tai Chi, or any of those classes. We have a lot of really wonderful people in our community that teach and they’re willing to do it basically for free, and they want to give back to the community that ourselves. So that’s what we started here.
Sometimes people say, “What would make you different than the other dispensaries?” because we do have quite a few. I think we have like 15 of them now. I would say that we’re very different. One is that we’ve been here so long. We have a lot of knowledge. We understand what goes on everywhere with cannabis. We also have cannabis consultants that are highly trained. We are probably one of the only dispensaries that has a no pesticide policy for any smokable.
We’re all a little bit different. And I think it’s really worth trying a lot of different places and see what they’re like and see which one you feel more comfortable with and who gives you the best information or has the best products. I think that’s probably a good idea. I actually have a tri-fold holder right now, down here, where you can go and pick up tri-folds of the different dispensaries, because I feel it’s important for people to be able to know where we all are. You can go visit, kind of like a tour.
Humboldt County is very important in cannabis because we’re in the Emerald Triangle area. We’ve been pretty much the main drivers of cannabis for years and years. We’re famous for that.
I’ve been here since 1972. I’ve seen Eureka change over that time. I have been involved with the City of Arcata and Eureka for the entire time, pretty much, that I have been here. I feel that they’ve tried really hard to include us in their plans, and, actually, we’ve become a big part in Eureka. We’ve made some really great headway in a lot of things. I think we have things we’re working on, but we know what they are. And I think that we are trying to do that. I think the city is definitely trying to make this the kind of place that people want to come and visit and live in and have a good experience coming here.
