Santa’s last stop is on the Grand Strand

Tommy Roberts makes house calls, but he is not a doctor.

He is Traveling Santa Claus, and for the past six years he said he has been building his clientele and meeting a lot of great people along the way.

How many people can say they have the ultimate job, delivering joy to kids and adults alike? Heck, we want to go into Will Ferrell Elf mode ourselves and yell, “Santa!”

Roberts, 61, arrived on the Grand Strand 10 years ago from outside of Philadelphia with wife Cathy Roberts.

“We were unhappy with a lot of things in [Pennsylvania] and the job I had was ending, so we figured we’d look around,” he said.

They poked around in North Carolina for a bit and wound up grabbing a bite in North Myrtle Beach, where the waitress pointed them toward a new development in Little River.

“We showed up in the morning and bought a house in the afternoon,” he said – an audacious move by anybody’s standards, but a decision that has now stood the test of time.

Roberts has been a man of many hats and has enjoyed a multifaceted career. He worked in the automotive industry and owned an auto salvage yard for more than 20 years.

He was also a promoter, touring for five years with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, as some will remember as the creator of Rat Fink and a major player in hot rod culture. He also worked with the Budweiser Girls.

While he was a limo driver in New York City, he fell into acting – what he calls bit parts – after an encounter with Harvey Keitel.

“I was his driver, and he told me that they needed somebody that looked like me for a non-speaking part,” he said. “I went and got the job.”

He continued to snag other featured extra jobs, and this continued after he moved to Little River.

“They were doing a lot in Wilmington [NC], and I got hooked up with them.”

Roberts has appeared in “Eastbound and Down,” “Under the Dome,” “The Conjuring” and the Melissa McCarthy vehicle, “Tammy.”

He also tried his hand as a comedian, on and off for more than a decade.

“They don’t throw bottles at Santa Claus,” he quipped.

Roberts said Traveling Santa Claus [www.travelingsantaclaus.com] was something that he kicked around for a while before taking the plunge. He decided that his niche would be home visits.

“I charge 25 dollars and I stay 15 minutes,” he said. "They can have one kid or they can have 30 kids. You pay by the hour. I take all the pictures you want, and that’s the big draw there. And I am on their own turf – the kids’ turf – and they are all happy. And if they put presents out on the porch, I will put them in my bag as I walk in – so I can hand them all out.”

Obviously, everything is prearranged with the parents ahead of time, and Roberts said Traveling Santa knows all the kids’ names when he comes in. He is fully insured, SLED approved, and licensed in every county where he works.

“It’s a little overhead, but I do it right,” he said.

Roberts can also be found on Facebook as Traveling Santa Claus. He typically does 100 home visits in the peak of the season. He has also done corporate parties, house parties and festivals – including the Winter Wonderland event at Horry-Georgetown Technical College and Kidtopia in Fayetteville, N.C., where he said he saw 1,100 kids in six hours.

He stays in touch with other Santa Clauses via the Internet.

“We all talk to each other, and I learned a lot from them,” he said.

And he enjoys the traveling and meeting folks – spreading the holiday cheer as he goes.

He plans on continuing as Traveling Santa every season – and when he officially retires in July, he’s jumping back into acting.

“The great thing about acting is that the roles I got as I got older are all roles for older people – most of what I played were bums and derelicts. Since I have the beard, I’m always getting typecast.”

But is he staying put on the Grand Strand?

“This is it. It’s our last stop,” he said.

This story was originally published December 14, 2015 at 1:13 PM with the headline "Santa’s last stop is on the Grand Strand."