Dade City diamond promotion hits rough spot

One jewel and 437 fakes were handed out at a parade. So far, the authentic stone hasn't turned up.

By CHASE SQUIRES

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 9, 2001

DADE CITY -- The $700 question in Dade City is: Who's got "the Diamond?"

Jewelry store owner David Hevia said when he came up with the idea of handing out 437 cubic zirconia stones -- and one real diamond -- to people lining the streets for Dade City's Magical Night Christmas Parade, everyone warned him the idea was, well, half-baked.

Hevia owns Kiefer Village Jewels along with his wife, Wendy, and partner, J.R. Harrelson. The three handed out the stones to women along the route. One of the gems is a real 1/3-carat diamond worth about $700; the others are zirconia, pretty and worth about $15 each, but not the real thing.

His hope was that recipients would bring their gems to the store in the days following the parade. There, he said, he has equipment that can determine which gem is the real deal.

Handing out the stones, Hevia said, was a Christmas-time promotion, a way to target likely shoppers and draw them to his store. There were instructions with each gem, including the store's address and hours.

Hevia said his employees begged him to hand out all fake diamonds and mark one of them with a tiny engraving allowing the lucky recipient to exchange it for a genuine diamond.

"You know, to me, that would just not have the same impact," Hevia said Monday. "I wanted to actually give away a real diamond during the parade."

Now, Hevia said he is starting to wonder.

Only about 60 people have brought their baubles in to have them checked. None of them were the real thing, although some people enjoyed the cubic zirconia so much that they had them set in earrings or a pendant.

But that means someone still has a real diamond tucked in a coat pocket or forgotten in a drawer or passed along to a child.

"It's really a hometown event, so I figure whoever has it is probably local," Hevia said. "I'm just afraid that people aren't going to come down here and check. They figure they're not that lucky. Well, someone is that lucky, they just don't know it."

Hevia said he and his partners were careful to hand out the gems to adults, mostly women, along the parade route for fear that children would lose them or fail to read the instructions.

It never occurred to him that even an adult might pass up the chance to test the stone.

"We were trying to think of something fun for the parade, and we thought about handing out beads, since we're a jewelry store," Hevia said. "Then someone said, "Hey, why not hand out diamonds?' and we all laughed. Then we thought, "Well, why not?' "

Hevia and his partners are known around town for taking risks. They moved from a rented storefront and gambled when they bought the historic Touchton Building, a landmark that needed plenty of renovation.

They created and hosted a series of bicycle races through downtown Dade City in October, putting up many of the prizes. And for a time they considered installing a big, freestanding, antique-looking clock in front of their store in the middle of downtown.

But handing out a diamond in the middle of a parade?

"My staff said I was crazy to do this," Hevia said.

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