Rudd, 39, organizes more than 30 community events in Long Beach every year. His projects reflect his passions – dogs, kids, running, and the environment – and accomplish an amazing thing: they bring people out and together.

Last year, 4,000 runners and 60 volunteers participated in his sixth annual Turkey Trot, a 5k/10k race that raised $120,000 toward the Community Action Team, the 501c3 not-for-profit organization he founded. His Haute Dog Howl’oween and Easter Parades are now holiday traditions.

While his website, justinrudd.com, can make you dizzy with the number of events under his name, his actions erase any doubt that one person can only do so much.

Rudd is originally from Ozark, Alabama, a small town in the southeast corner of the state. His mother is an artist and his father runs the family business, Rudd Furniture Company. Growing up, the active household included his fraternal twin brother and three sisters. “My sisters and I organized art shows and sold artwork to my mom and the neighbors,” he laughs. “My parents weren’t pushy. They really taught us independence and to do our own thing.”

For Rudd, that included 12 years of perfect attendance, four years as high school class president, and performing in school musicals. He also began helping others. “I remember organizing clothes drives and collecting food,” he says. “And it wasn’t like we collected only two bags of food, we collected a lot. Even at a younger age I wasn’t happy with a meager drive. I wanted everything to be significant.”

His faith plays a major part in his life. Rudd was active in church youth groups, sang in the choir, and would later organize Bible Studies in the family furniture store. “My faith has always been important to me. Still is.”

College took him to Samford University in Birmingham where he studied marketing and discovered an unusual area of expertise, pageant interview coaching. After helping a friend successfully compete in the Miss Samford University pageant, Rudd began coaching other contestants who would go on to win at the state level and compete nationally. He also noticed there wasn’t an easy way to prepare for pageant interviews, so he compiled every interview question he ever heard into a book, and Justin Rudd’s 1,001 Pageant Practice Questions was born.

Rudd returned to Ozark after graduation and continued to work in interview coaching. He met his then-partner backstage at the Miss America pageant. “I was in this long distant relationship for a year,” Rudd says. “I came out [to my family] and decided to move to California.”

In 1995, Rudd found himself in North Hollywood. He coached pageant interviews, did background work in TV and film, and found steady employment singing with Disney. A year and a half later, he moved to Long Beach.

“I was visiting a friend who lived on Ocean Blvd. and remembered waves crashing,” he recalls. “It was quite different from the South and Alabama, more liberal and environmentally conscious.” Rudd made Long Beach his home and soon found himself with a friend for life.

“My partner at the time was in love with bulldogs,” he says. “One day he called and said there were bulldog puppies for sale and would I mind if he got one.” The puppy in question was Rosie, now 11 and Rudd’s constant companion. “I fell in love with her right away. She was three months old and the size of two hands.” Riley, a rescued bulldog, would join Rosie nine years later.

Soon after, Rudd would literally run into his first community project, the 30-Minute Beach Cleanup. “I was running along the water and saw the trash that washed up,” he explains. “I thought either the City was not doing enough or couldn’t control it, so I started to get my friends together and organized a beach cleanup.” The next month, he asked them to bring their friends, and again the month after that. Now, ten years later, as many as 250 people meet on the third Saturday of each month in Belmont Shore.

It would be the first of many events Rudd would organize. His projects now range from spelling bees to providing bikes and school supplies for under-served children to the Long Beach Giving Project, inspired by Oprah’s Big Give. It was Rudd’s connection with dogs, however, that created his most popular activities.

Entering its ninth year, the Haute Dog Howl’oween Parade features dogs, and sometimes their owners, in costumes from astronauts to Elvis. Last year, the parade featured 700 registered dogs, with an additional 200 dogs watching from the sidewalk with their people.

Its spring counterpart, the Haute Dog Easter Parade, was another of Rudd’s early projects. “I asked friends to join [Rosie and me] in Livingston Park for ‘Yappy Hour’ to let our dogs socialize. I got all of us to walk a few blocks along Second Street and back to the park.” Later, viewing of New York’s Easter parade on TV would inspire these annual events.

Work on his “most significant accomplishment” began six years ago when Rudd started a campaign that would create a local landmark, the threeacre Dog Beach Zone. Once a month, for 20 straight months, he filed a special event permit and personally hosted canine-friendly afternoons on the beach. “There was a pilot program and before that, two years of work with the City to get [the beach] zoned,” he says. Dog Beach is now the only legal off-leash dog beach in Los Angeles County.

Despite his full schedule, Rudd is happy. “Someone said, ‘why do when you can overdo.’ I like to overdo and keep busy as long as I can be challenged. And I’m going to keep doing, going, to keep trying to make my part of the world a better place.”

His world includes Ralph Millero, his partner of six years, who works in development for a major studio. They met when Millero, volunteering with another non-profit, approached Rudd with a dog-related project. “He called one weekend, we got together a month later, and hit it off.”

Rudd currently makes his living through the salary he draws as Executive Director of the Community Action Team, pageant interview coaching and sales from his book, work as a fitness trainer, and his freelance photography, another love from childhood.

“I do the fitness and the photography because I enjoy it. I don’t find it’s work. Same with the non-profit. It’s long hours and I give up a lot of things, but it goes back to growing up in church and being happy with what I have done.”

“I’m always meeting people at Beach Cleanups. Service groups will come and ask me to speak on how one person can make a difference and I say it can happen. I choose to make a difference and choose to be a person making a difference,” Rudd says. “We pick our battles and pick our opportunities. I choose opportunity and take it.”

Photos courtesy of Samuel Lippke and Justin Rudd.