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FINDING HER NEW BEST FRIEND
For 31-year-old New Yorker Micherre Fox, the road to a perfect engagement diamond did not lead to a jeweler’s counter but to Crater of Diamonds State Park in the US state of Arkansas, where—against the odds—she found a 2.3-carat gem on her very last day of searching.
About two years ago, Fox set herself an unorthodox goal: to skip traditional jewelry stores and, instead, to find her engagement diamond herself.
“I was willing to go anywhere in the world to make that happen,” she said. “I researched, and it turned out that the only place in the world to do it was right in our backyard, in Arkansas!”
With her supportive partner, encouraging her search, Fox dedicated the better part of a month-long vacation, after earning a graduate degree, to prospecting at the only public, diamond-producing US site where visitors can keep their finds.
Staying in a tent and digging daily from 8 am to 4 pm, she took only one day off in her month of searching. The summer heat was brutal, and she admits that she was physically unprepared.
"There were days where I would not shower," she said. "By the time I got done digging, I was so tired and hurt, I could not find the energy to spend 10 minutes undressing and taking a shower."
She says that her shovel was even stolen at one point, forcing her to walk a three-hour round trip, to the nearest hardware store.
“You need to be willing and able to solve problems with hard work,” she said.
Fox’s daily searches across the park’s 37.5-acre (15 hectares) field proved to be “daunting.”
“After all the research, there must be luck, and there must be hard work,” she said. “When you are literally picking up the dirt in your hands, no amount of research can do it all for you; no amount of education can take you all the way.”
At about 11 am on her last scheduled day at the park, she paused when a sparkle caught her eye. At first, she thought it might be “a dew-covered spiderweb.” But poking it with her boot, the shine remained.
Fox picked up what she described as the “most diamond-y diamond” that she had ever seen.
Clutching the gem in her fist, Fox raced to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center, where the staff confirmed that she had found a colorless diamond weighing more than two carats, estimated to be worth over USD$20,000 (NTD$600,000).
It was the third-largest diamond registered in the park so far that year.
Overcome with emotion, she “got on her knees and cried, then started laughing.”
The diamond — about the size of a human cuspid tooth, with a smooth, rounded shape and metallic luster — is typical of most Crater diamonds. The gem’s blemished surface hints at its violent journey to the surface from deep within Earth’s mantle.
Fox, honoring both her and her partner’s surnames, has called her find the “Fox-Ballou Diamond” and plans to set it in her engagement ring.
It is not clear whether she will have her stone cut or leave it in its natural state.
Assistant Superintendent Waymon Cox remarked that her discovery underscores how “even though you are putting forth your best effort, being in the right place at the right time plays a big part in finding diamonds.”
Her discovery joins 366 diamonds registered at the park so far in 2025. In total, more than 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at the Crater of Diamonds State Park since the first diamonds were discovered in 1906 by John Huddleston, the farmer who then owned the land, long before it became an Arkansas state park in 1972.
The old song says, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Well, Micherre is a very lucky girl: she will not only have a new husband; she’ll have a new best friend, too.
SOURCE: mosesjewelers.com
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