Shortly after conservative Christian icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Sara De Luca decided to honor him by placing stickers on coffee cups at her business, Invita Cafe in Rancho Santa Fe, California — a suburb of San Diego.
The stickers read, “Thank You, Charlie Kirk — We Love You.”
De Luca told Fox News that she had long supported Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization and had even met and hosted Kirk and his wife, Erika.
It never occurred to her that anyone would object to such a simple message of support for someone who had just died so tragically and violently.
“I honestly did not think twice about it,” she told Fox News. “I did not even think, ‘Oh, this could be controversial.’ … It didn’t even cross my mind.”
The staff started affixing the stickers to cups shortly after Kirk’s death.
Soon, she got a call from her baristas.
“Sara, the phone is ringing nonstop, and they’re saying these horrible, horrific things,” they told her, De Luca recalled.
Coffee shop hit with hate for Charlie Kirk tribute sees sales surge as ‘righteous people’ show up https://t.co/9AMhVlcvX2 pic.twitter.com/8O2GW8OmI1
— New York Post (@nypost) October 2, 2025
At first, the flood of criticism was overwhelming. They got so many negative reviews on their Yelp and Google pages that they took them down.
But De Luca wasn’t deterred. She told her workers, “Good people are going to show up.”
“I expected that,” she said.
But a lot more of them showed up than she ever dreamed. When word got out of their struggles, people from De Luca’s community, and particularly her church, Awaken, did indeed show up — in droves.
She said that by Wednesday, she started getting tears in her eyes when she saw the support the little shop was getting.
Sales were up 312 percent, she said.
Long lines formed as people waited 30 to 45 minutes to be served.
“We were flooded with righteous people just showing up, supporting us, defending us — they were defending Charlie, obviously we all were,” she said.
“We didn’t have any haters show up,” she said.
“It was only the righteous showing up — just God-fearing people who are like, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing. Charlie would be proud.’”
Support didn’t just come from the neighborhood. People from across the country placed orders online, she said.
Invita Café in San Diego County is putting “Thank you Charlie Kirk, We Love You” stickers on their drinks—
And now they’re being attacked for it.
If you’re in San Diego County, skip Starbucks and support Invita Café. pic.twitter.com/gYqV6gpUYB
— Isabella Maria DeLuca (@IsabellaMDeLuca) September 18, 2025
“We had somebody from Georgia call and say, ‘Can I just give you $500 and buy the next 100 drinks?’”
Another man walked into the shop and left $300 “and just walked out,” she told Fox News.
“Where did these people come from?” she found herself wondering.
She answered her own question in her interview with Fox News.
“God is so behind all of this,” she said.
“This is insane. But I think Charlie would have been proud.”
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