Steelhorse Strangers Person County Toy Run

About this event

Christmas had become the hard part of the year in the Shotwell house. Erin Shotwell's son died on a school playground during the holiday season, and she has said plainly that it made Christmas a sad time for the family; the toy run was her attempt to put the joy back into a date that had stopped having any. Sixteen years on it is one of the larger things that happens in Person County.

Erin is secretary of the Steelhorse Strangers and her husband Jarrett is president. The toys go out through Santa's Helpers of Person County, a Roxboro outfit under Robin Simpson whose stated aim is that every child in the county finds new toys on Christmas morning — though the club was running this ride for roughly a decade before that charity was incorporated, which says something about who was doing the work first.

It musters on Frank Timberlake Road in Timberlake, and the delivery is the part worth seeing: hundreds of bikers carrying the toys into Roxboro in one column. Note the timing before planning around it — the run has moved out of December and into November for the past two years.