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Show A17 Castle Valley Review, February 2009 Lewis Jewelry Carol Moosman (left) and Kathy Rushnow are all smiles at Lewis Jewelry. Photo by James L. Davis Dream Job As owner of Lewis Jewelry, Carol Moosman gets to work with the most beautiful things in the world. She says it doesn’t get much better than that. James L. Davis C arol Moosman realizes that she has a dream job. As owner of Lewis Jewelry, every day she gets to come to work and help her customers find that perfect, beautiful token that will whisper their feelings for a loved one. “Where else can you get up and go to work and do what I do? I get to handle the most beautiful things in the world. Diamonds are about as good as it ever gets,” Carol said, flashing an ever-ready smile. Perhaps the only thing Carol is more passionate about at her work are her customers, who she talks of with that same smile on her face, as though she were talking about old friends, which many of them are. Carol has been owner of Lewis Jewelry since 1993, when she bought the jewelry store from Richard Lewis. She had worked for the Lewis’ for years prior to taking over the business when he decided to retire. Although when she started working for the Lewis’ she had no experience in the jewelry business, she dedicated herself toward gaining knowledge by completing courses through the Gemological Institute of America and is today certified in colored stone grading and diamond grading. She knows a good diamond when she sees one and one of the most frustrating things for her is when she sees people who have shopped over the internet and are disappointed after settling for an inferior diamond. “A good diamond is like the most beautiful child you’ll ever have and a bad diamond is like the ugly duckling in the back yard,” Carol said. “And unfortunately people don’t understand that, so when they go buying on the internet they think a diamond is a diamond is a diamond. B.K.’S STOP-N-SHOP Fuel • Pizza Daily Lunch Specials Best Fast Food In Huntington! 480 North Main, Huntington 435-687-9393 Right now you have laser filled and you have chemically treated and you have heat treated. I mean there are so many processes to make a really bad diamond look good. You can’t ultrasonic them and you can’t steam clean them. Even the certificate that I saw from one man said you can’t ultrasonic and you can’t steam clean. Those are the processes that every jeweler uses to clean jewelry. But if I clean them the process they used to make the diamonds look clear goes away.” As the last jeweler in Price, Carol said the battle she faces is against mall stores and the internet as people mistakenly think they can find a better deal out of the area. “People don’t understand. Gold is the same way. Whatever price it is going out at that day is the price I pay, and so does everyone else. So if that ring is less expensive, there’s a reason. Every trade magazine says to buy with a local, hometown jeweler and they say that for a couple of reasons. For one, they don’t have the markup that a mall store has. For the other, they own their own buildings, they aren’t paying a lease. All I pay is property taxes. I would love to remodel but it takes everything the store does to sustain three people with jobs. I’m not driving a Lincoln, so you can sell a better quality for less,” she said. Carol’s employees at Lewis Jewelry include Kathy Rushnow, who has been with her for 13 years, and Cherilyn Johnson, who has worked for her for three years. Together the three offer a full service jewelry store. Besides fine jewelry, they also perform jewelry repair of every kind. In the store they can perform chain repair, gold soldering and sizing. Other repairs, specialty work and even watch repair, they send out to have completed. Carol’s husband, Merlin, is a coal miner, and the two will celebrate their 39th anni- Your Supply Headquarters Jones Hardware The helpful place. 185 E Main Castle Dale, UT 381-2421 •Fishing •Vacation •Camping •R.V. Parts •Paint•Tools •Home Goods •Hardware •Hunting & Accessories versary this year. “He’s a Wellington boy who married a hippy from Salt Lake,” she said with a laugh, recalling how she used to come to Scofield as a girl with her parents, and didn’t particularly enjoy it. “I hated coming here as a kid. I was a teenager. I was doing everything you weren’t supposed to be doing,” she said. But now, 39 years later, Carol said she loves the area and its people. “Nobody wants to go to the store with me because I’m going to stop and chat with everybody, because I like them. They’re my people, they’re my family,” she said. Loving the people of the area and taking pride in the service she gives to her customers, means that over the years she has learned what to expect from them. “We do love our customers. We have some of the most wonderful people shop with us. We have one that we know is going to wander in here three minutes before Valentine’s Day. He knows exactly how much he wants to spend, and that’s fine. At Christmas time I know which men are going to call and how much they are going to want to spend. We know their wives and we know what they like and we know what will please her and what won’t. A lot of times they will come in and say ‘oh, I really love this, when you see my husband tell him,’” Carol said. It is knowing what her customers want and taking care of them that keeps them coming back and it’s the returning customers that keep Carol and her employees dedicated to providing the best in quality jewelry to the Castle Valley area. “There isn’t anything that goes out of here that I’m not proud of…ever,” she said. CAll utAh BusIness lendIng CorporAtIon We are a Direct Micro Lender for the United States Department of Agriculture It’s tIme to Buy A BuIldIng For your BusIness A Building is a Business Owners 401K 801-654-2213 |