Missouri girl finds 2.9-carat stone at Arkansas diamond park

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Story Published: Jun 7, 2007 at 7:19 AM PST

By Associated Press

MURFREESBORO, Ark. (AP) - Thirteen-year-old Nicole Ruhter and her family didn't have much luck during a day spent digging for diamonds at a state park, but she kept looking even as they walked along a path that evening.

Bingo. She found a tea-colored, 2.93-carat diamond.

"I was kind of praying to God. I was saying, 'I don't care if it's worth whatever it's worth, I don't care if it's a tiny little sliver of something, I just want something,"' said Nicole, of Butler, Mo., who just finished seventh grade. "Ten minutes later, I just found it."

So far this year, Crater of Diamonds State Park visitors have found 332 diamonds - roughly two a day, assistant park superintendent Bill Henderson said. But the average stone is about the size of a match head, according to the park's Web site.

Nicole and her parents, grandparents, brother and two sisters had dug in two fields Tuesday before they headed down a service road followed by thousands of other visitors.

"I just walked and saw this little shine," Nicole said. "We wrapped it up in a little dollar bill and took it back" to show park rangers.

Nicole described the stone as a broken pyramid and said she's going to name it the "Pathfinder Diamond."

She and her family said they'll keep it for a time and find out how much it is worth before trying to sell it.

While the park does not do appraisals, Henderson said experts once valued a 4-carat diamond found in the park at $15,000 to $60,000. Nicole's diamond does have chips and imperfections, he said.

Crater of Diamonds State Park, which opened in 1972, is the world's only diamond-producing site open to the public, and visitors keep the gems they unearth. The largest was the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight, a white diamond found by a Texas visitor in 1975.

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