A steady Christmas Eve rain did little to slow the crowd of Santa-suited runners who turned out in Mobile for one of the city’s most beloved holiday traditions, which this year set new records for both turnout and fundraising. The 13th annual Santa Run, organized by Carpe Diem Coffee and Tea Co., drew more than 500 registered participants and raised over $15,000, the highest totals in the event’s history.
The morning festivities went ahead despite the damp weather, with runners lining up in red and white to weave through the neighborhood around the popular midtown coffee shop. Rain has spoiled few editions of the run over the years, and the 13th proved that the event’s pull — costume, community and Christmas spirit — holds up even when the Gulf Coast weather does not cooperate.
This year’s proceeds were dedicated to a cause close to the Carpe Diem family. The money will help support Cindy Hoobler Brouillette, a longtime employee of the shop who is undergoing treatment for cancer. Her connection to the run was reflected in the event’s keepsake: the 2014 commemorative T-shirt features a friendly caricature of Brouillette. That artwork was drawn by Dr. Dave Mayer, the husband of Tomi Sue Rusling Mayer, who formerly owned Carpe Diem.
More than 200 of the shirts were sold. Organizers said the adult sizes had sold out, though youth sizes remained available at the shop for anyone hoping to pick one up after the race. The shirt sales, stacked on top of the registration totals, gave the fundraising haul its record-setting edge.
A run built on remembrance
The Santa Run carries a deeper meaning beyond the holiday cheer and the fun run atmosphere. It is held each year in memory of Van Rusling, Tomi Sue Rusling Mayer’s late husband, who died in 2005 after a battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. What began as a tribute has grown into an annual gathering that blends remembrance with community generosity, channeling the goodwill of the season toward neighbors in need.
That origin story shapes the event’s character. Participants are not just running a course; they are keeping a promise made to a family that gave Mobile one of its favorite coffeehouses. Each year the run’s beneficiary changes, but the purpose stays the same: turn a morning of silliness in Santa suits into concrete help for someone connected to the Carpe Diem community who is facing a hard fight.
The formula has proven durable. Over 13 years the run has become one of the fixtures of Mobile’s December calendar, drawing families who return annually, some with children who have grown up in the event. The costume requirement — red suits, white beards, the occasional reindeer or elf — keeps the tone light even when the cause is serious, and the short, neighborhood-scale course makes it accessible to runners and walkers of every ability.
The shop, a familiar fixture in Mobile’s coffee scene, kept its normal holiday hours around the event, closing at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve before reopening the morning after Christmas. For the staff, the run day means an early start and a full house, the biggest crowd of the season filling the shop before and after the race.
Midtown’s coffeehouse tradition
Carpe Diem Coffee and Tea Co. occupies a special place in Mobile’s midtown landscape. Independent coffee shops do more than serve espresso; they become gathering points where neighborhoods define themselves, and Carpe Diem has played that role for years. The Santa Run is the clearest expression of that function — an event that could only belong to a shop with deep roots in its surrounding streets, organized by people who know their customers by name.
Midtown Mobile’s commercial districts have seen community events of this kind multiply over the years, from fun runs to festival nights, as neighborhoods reassert their identity through shared traditions. The Santa Run stands among the most established, and its growth to record numbers reflects both the shop’s loyal following and a broader appetite for events that give families something to do together on the holiday’s most quiet morning.
Christmas Eve has always been the run’s slot, and that timing is part of its charm. By late morning on December 24, the errands are done and the city settles into the waiting that precedes the holiday. The run fills those hours with noise, laughter and a sea of red suits, then disperses participants back to their family celebrations by early afternoon.
Where the money goes
The decision to direct 2014’s proceeds to Brouillette followed the run’s established pattern of choosing a beneficiary within the Carpe Diem orbit — an employee, a family member, or a neighbor facing medical bills or hardship. Cancer treatment imposes costs that reach far beyond the medical bills themselves, from travel to lost income, and community fundraisers like this one are often the difference between a family absorbing those costs alone and facing them with a neighborhood behind them.
The record $15,000 total will make a practical difference, and the way it was raised says as much as the amount. Five hundred registrations, two hundred shirts and a rain-soaked morning of participation represent a community that shows up — literally — for its own. Organizers have learned over the years that the event’s success depends less on the weather than on the shop’s ability to mobilize its people, and the 13th edition confirmed that the network holds.
For those who missed the race but still want a piece of it, youth-size shirts remained available at the shop after the event, with proceeds continuing to support the cause. The keepsake designs have become collector’s items among regulars, each year’s artwork marking both the beneficiary and the moment in the shop’s history — this year’s caricature of Brouillette doubling as a portrait of the community’s affection.
With the 13th run in the books, attention in the Carpe Diem family will turn to next December. The event has now set records for turnout and fundraising, honored a beloved employee, and carried Van Rusling’s memory through another Christmas Eve — the same quiet formula, executed one more time at a slightly larger scale, in the neighborhood that has made it Mobile’s own holiday tradition.
How the run grew from a tribute
Events like the Santa Run rarely start as institutions. The first edition was a modest gesture of remembrance — a way for the Carpe Diem family and its customers to mark the loss of Van Rusling while doing something he would have enjoyed. The Christmas Eve timing suited the shop’s rhythm, and the Santa costume idea gave it the mixture of humor and heart that keeps people coming back. Year by year, the run accumulated its own traditions: the commemorative shirts, the local artists who drew them, the neighborhood route, and the ritual of gathering back at the shop afterward.
Thirteen years is long enough that the run now spans generations of participants. Parents who ran the early editions bring children who were not born when the event began. The route through the midtown streets around the coffee shop has become as familiar to participants as the shop itself, and neighbors along the way have learned to expect the parade of red suits that passes their houses every Christmas Eve morning.
The fundraising side has matured with the event. Early editions raised modest amounts, but as registration grew, the totals climbed, and the run became one of midtown’s most effective grassroots fundraisers. The model is deliberately simple: a registration fee, a shirt sale, and a named beneficiary whose story is told in the weeks before the race. There is no corporate sponsorship apparatus or ticketed gala — just a coffee shop, a neighborhood and a cause.
Why it matters to the beneficiaries
For the people the run supports, the value extends beyond the dollars. Being chosen as the beneficiary of an event with this kind of community weight is itself a statement — a public affirmation that a neighbor’s fight is the whole neighborhood’s fight. Brouillette’s caricature on the 2014 shirt made that support visible in a way that outlasts the race: every time the shirt is worn, the story of the year the community rallied around her travels with it.
Medical fundraisers fill a real gap on the Gulf Coast, where families confronting serious illness often face long treatments at facilities hours away, along with the income disruption that comes with them. Community events like the Santa Run cannot solve those problems, but they can lighten the load meaningfully, and the record-setting total from this year’s edition will do exactly that for its recipient.
The rain that fell through this year’s event will fade from the story quickly. What will last is the number — 500-plus runners, more than $15,000 raised, adult shirts sold out — and the continuing proof that a Christmas Eve tradition born in memory of one man now sustains a whole community’s habit of taking care of its own. That is a legacy Van Rusling’s family and the Carpe Diem crew can count on repeating when the red suits come out again next December.