12/19/2024
Jeweler awards diamond to Irvine student after 30 years.
In 1993, I launched a writing contest for students. The assignment offered the chance for school kids to win a diamond for their moms for composing the most creative essay entitled, Why Mom Deserves a Diamond. I was adopted and never met my birthmother. After searching for nearly twenty years, I had discovered she had already died.
The contest would give the opportunity for students to be recognized for their talent, and to show their appreciation for their own moms-especially while they were living.
By 1995, thousands of kids submitted heartfelt treasures. After hours of judging, the stack was narrowed down to forty-one possible diamond winners. One student would win the diamond, and 40 runners up would receive sapphires. That stack dwindled down to only two essays. After laboring over these two compositions, I finally selected the one written by Scott Kircher, a sixth-grade student, and declared him the grand-prize winner. Scott came to our store with his mother, knelt before her, recited his words and presented the diamond.
The competing essay was from a ninth-grade girl named Lauren O’Hara from Irvine High School. I called her teacher to declare her an honorable sapphire winner. Lauren came to our store the following week with her mother to claim her jewel. I will never forget when her mother read her poem, dabbed a tear from her eye and said, “This is the diamond winner.” I remember biting my lip, preventing myself from divulging that Lauren’s essay was inches away from being the grand-prize winner. They left beaming without realizing that both Scott’s and Lauren’s essays were etched into my brain forever.
I was proud to have selected Scott’s most deserving essay. But I could not free my mind from Lauren’s profound words that continued to haunt me for years to come. I always felt her words needed to be displayed for the world to read.
By sheer luck- thirty years later, my assistant was able to track down Lauren’s mom, who had moved to Orting in Washington State. I called Mrs. O’Hara who said Lauren’s essay had been proudly resting in a frame for the past 30 years.
I said we were mailing her daughter a quarter-carat diamond that she could present to her. To continue the legacy of the 33-year-old contest and give meaning to the sparkling gem, Lauren would need to recite her winning words before presenting her diamond.
I learned that it is never too late to alter the universe and now is always better than later. For this years’ Why Mom Deserves a Diamond contest, we will again select a diamond winner from a tower of essays that will reach the ceiling. But there will be one other diamond winner that will be quite a bit older- Lauren O’Hara, whose words of love for her mother will never be forgotten.
A diamond and my mother
Are two of the same
Diamonds all around her
Sparkle in her name
For never has there been
A dark and starless night
For with the shining of my mother’s eyes
From darkness comes light
Dew on morning rose
Diamonds in the sky
Kind words when a new day starts
All these things I see in her-
The diamond of my heart
Lauren O’Hara. Grade 9.
2025 Diamond Winner. (Written in 1995.)
Attached is a copy of Lauren’s original essay she mailed us in 1995.
Diamond Mike Watson
Gallery of Diamonds
1528 Brookhollow Drive, Suite 200
Santa Ana, CA 92705
714-549-2000
