Always the Optimist

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"Okay," says Russ. "We can still beat her. We have four votes!"

Darlene smiles indulgently, concluding, "What we'll do..."

Half the meeting is devoted to staff issues. So-and-so wants to be a manager. So-and-so's going to be offended. So-and-so's frustrated and going to leave if not promoted. It's delicate stuff, and it's revealing that Darlene will trust an outsider, this reporter, to sit in. With decisive clarity, she sums up the situation: "So the question is: Is now the right time to make this person part of the management team? If so, who's going to be offended? If not, how do we explain it?"

PharmaFab's head count tops 200, and deciding to add payroll is often done on the fly. Later in the meeting, Danny lobbies to hire a Ph.D. chemist from Bulgaria who's working as an $18-an-hour temp in the lab. Because he doesn't have a permanent job, his son's been deported. "It's a heart-wrenching story," says Danny. "We could make him an offer."

"Do it," says Darlene.

Personnel issues resolved, it's on to new product development. The company's banking big on a new twice-a-day cough syrup ("We figured a way to mask the taste," says Darlene. "You've never tasted a cough syrup this good!"). But it's proving tricky to test.

"We cranked up the rpm [revolutions per minute] and it tore up the inside of my tank," Mark reports.

Darlene looks concerned. "When did that happen?"

"Five minutes before we walked in here."

"Do I have a tank I need to replace?"

"We're hoping it's just a ding," says Mark and shrugs.

It takes more than a ding to shake Darlene. Sadly, Ken's illness was followed by other family health problems. This past fall, Darlene's husband, Dick, began acting erratically and was diagnosed with a rare neurological disease. The symptoms resemble Alzheimer's, and it's incurable. In January he was moved out of the house and into an assisted care facility. A month before, her son Kevin was operated on for a serious heart arrhythmia. Pre-op, the prognosis was good, but Kevin fell into the 2% for whom the surgery did not work. The condition is not immediately life-threatening, and Darlene is pursuing other medical options.

"We'll just keep our fingers crossed, and see what's out there," she says, always the optimist.

Mother and son have their picture taken with the mayoral plaque at the end of the official Darlene Ryan Day ceremony, and then he heads home with his grandmother, while Darlene moves on to hotel cocktails with a high-profile group from the Women's Business Center. It's a classy, tough bunch of entrepreneurs, which includes an aircraft parts supplier, the city's largest retail roofer (and waste disposal operator), and a commercial printer. "Darlene's our queen mother," offers one in a toast.

After that, Darlene meets with a group of investors from Chicago for dinner. PharmaFab's top line will likely jump by 60%, or $15 million, this year, and the money guys guess that sales could top $200 million in another few years. They want in.

The next morning, the group gathers with PharmaFab's management team in the company's conference room, which is named for Ken Montgomery. The Chicagoans look and sound impressive, and do a slick but subtle job pitching their firm. The big question on the table: What's on the horizon for PharmaFab? Right now PharmaFab is moving beyond "traditional tableting" into more sophisticated tablets and capsules. Then it could be ointments and lotions, maybe time-release inhalers. It's tempting to think of developing new products, but not at the expense of the core business. Sales are no problem -- the challenge is keeping up with customer demand. "Should PharmaFab grow by acquisition?" one of the investors asks.

"How could we?" says Russ. "We don't have time. We've got a ton of things on our plate."

The venture guys nod sympathetically, and the meeting breaks up with promising handshakes all around. When asked whether or not she'll do a deal, Darlene replies, "We'll see," and adds, "I don't need the capital right now."

You'll have to forgive her nonchalance, but this is not her first brush with investors. Darlene spent $400,000 last year trying to negotiate financing that she walked away from on Memorial Day. "They were going to take over my life for a relatively small amount of money," she says. "Finally I said, 'No thanks!"

Into the breach jumped Capital Southwest, a minority long-term player whom Darlene trusted and who pumped in $5.5 million last summer. When the contract was signed, no one paid much attention to a clause that required an equity shift if PharmaFab failed to meet projected goals. At that point, sales for 2003 were off the charts. Then, an unforeseen glitch threatened a key product. Mid-December, Darlene faced a $3 million shortfall -- and handing over roughly 10% ownership. The situation looked hopeless. There didn't seem to be enough time to fix the problem and then sell the product. And for once, Darlene herself was exhausted, played out. Dick had just been diagnosed; Kevin was recovering from his heart operation. Telling her management team to cope, she took her son on a recuperative cruise in the Caribbean.

On New Year's Day, Darlene checked her e-mail from the ship's computer center. A message from Danny revealed that while she was gone, the employees worked overtime to close the last $3 million of business. In the end, sales for that last month topped $4.2 million. PharmaFab's ownership remained in the family, thanks to Darlene's determined staff. "I don't know how they did it," she says, "but they did!" Of course, they had learned perseverance from her example.

Jonathan Black is a writer living in Chicago.

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