Evandro Tokarski learned early on that the body can set limits, but it does not define one’s place in the world. At two years and nine months, in 1958, he stopped walking after contracting polio, when the vaccine did not yet exist in Brazil. The paralysis affected his lower limbs and permanently modified his relationship to movement and taught him the power of care.
Born in Barbosa Ferraz, in the interior of Paraná, Evandro grew up in a large family, being the sixth of eleven brothers. At home, all children learned the importance of education. “My parents always wanted their children to be able to study. They didn’t have the opportunity.” The mother, Ms. Almerinda, who was only in the second year of primary school, was firm and affectionate: “Imagine a mother of 11 children. She was super energetic and trying to get everyone on the path,” he said between laughs at the Earth.
It was also she who taught Evandro that, whatever his mobility difficulties, he was not fragile. Almerinda, refused any attempt at pardon. “He just doesn’t walk. But he’s not a poor animal,” he repeated every time someone approached with excessive compassion. Taken everywhere, he grew up with a sense of belonging. “I have never seen myself smaller or taller, quite the contrary.”
In Paraná, Evandro traveled four kilometers on horseback to study. “I arrived at school, the teacher made me get off my horse. She put me on, I walked with a crutch.” In addition to school, trips with his mother and his routine at home, Evandro had frequent contact with nurses, technicians and doctors from an early age. Coexistence sowed a dream early on.
“Already when I was 11, 12, 13 years old, I wanted to be a health professional. (…) That’s what they did for me, and I said, wow, if I have to be a health professional, I’m going to do it for others.”
He originally planned to become a doctor, but his mobility prevented him from doing so. Then redirected to the pharmacy. He graduated from the Federal University of Goiás, where the family had moved. After a few internships, he discovered that manipulation was a form of individualized care. “Industrialized medicine has specifications for children and another for adults. But there is one detail, it has specificities, weight, age… These are characteristics which contribute to knowing whether a treatment is better or not.”
In 1981 he founded Farmácia Artesanal in Goiânia, then a small business that would grow with ethics and attention to people. Today, there are more than 130 franchises in 11 states and approximately 1,500 direct employees.
But the path to get there was strewn with obstacles, including invisible ones. “Actually, the biggest obstacles I faced were coming and going.” Second, the idea that when you are disabled you should be avoided by others. “A person in a wheelchair is not sick. They are not a sick person.”
Paralympic athlete
If he had already built his sense of being and living around two pillars, his family and his health, it was in sport that Evandro found another great school. In 1981, the International Year of Persons with Disabilities, he got into wheelchair basketball by chance.
“At the time, an association of people with disabilities was created here in Goiás. That’s when a teacher who was a basketball coach got together. He gathered four, five people in wheelchairs, put them on a court and started giving training. I didn’t even know if the ball was rectangular or round.”
There were tough defeats, games lost 70-0, but also perseverance. The team became the basis for the Brazilian team, and in 1988 it represented the country at the Paralympic Games in Seoul. “It was a gold medal just to participate,” he said.
For the first time, he traveled abroad. For the first time, he found himself in an Olympic village and, for the first time, he found himself among his equals: high-level athletes and, incidentally, disabled people. This experience not only opened Evandro to the world, it also shaped his leadership style.
“No one wins a game alone, no one does anything alone.” In sport as in business, the logic is the same: team, discipline and harmony. “If today we reach around 130 points, 11 States, more than 1,500 employees, no one built this alone.” This vision is also translated into figures and choices. Today, 68% of the group’s management is made up of women, and around 15% of employees are LGBTQIA+.
“I think it’s an example of other companies turning a blind eye to a group of people who are so important and so productive and have enormous skills and sometimes the doors close because of problem A, B, C or Z. That’s taking care of people.”
Today, at 70, he looks back and, pushed by his children, turns the story into a book. Leading is Caring: the inspiring story of the man who founded one of Brazil’s largest pharmaceutical groupsreleased in 2025. He himself describes his 70 years of life as an “odyssey”.
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