Founders Story

The Story of Charles Lawerence

Charles Lawrence, the founder of GEMiracle, Inc., comes from a family active in the jewelry trade for many generations. His great-great-grandfather owned a mercantile exchange in Bellingham, Washington. Besides furs and provisions, beads were an important part of his merchandise, because they were needed to trade furs with the Native Americans.

When Lawrence married the daughter of a jewelry family, jewelry became a part of the family business. The family continued to own jewelry stores in Bellingham, Vancouver and Seattle over the next 100 years.

Charles’ father bought a tourmaline mine in Pala, California. When he passed at an untimely early age, Charles moved to the mine at the age of 11 years old to live with his relatives. That’s how he built his enormous knowledge about mining from an early age, and acquired an exceptional ability to judge stones when they are still in the rough. During his summer vacations, he staid in touch with his family in Washington whom continued to run jewelry stores.

At the age of 17, in 1964, Charles left the USA for South East Asia. For the next ten years, he worked as a contractor for US military suppliers in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. In his free time, he would roam the countryside to find miners and sellers of rough gemstones, with his usual welcome phrase: “Don’t shoot me, I come to buy your stones.”

In order to enhance the value of his purchases when back in the USA, Charles perfected his stone cutting skills and began to sell perfectly cut gemstones. In 1993, he even won the 1st prize in the international gem cutting competition of the GIA, the organization which hosts the world’s largest international gemstone show in Tucson every year. He presented a spectacularly cut Mexican Fire Opal.

At the end of the Vietnam war, after 1974, Charles came back to the USA and continued his life as a global traveler, gemstone buyer and cutter. He continued to make regular trips to South East Asia, and also other gemstone mining countries around the world. He would travel to Mexico and Guatemala with his van out of California.

In 1984, Charles finally settled down a bit more and opened a jewelry store on the coast of North county, San Diego. In addition, he set up a professional laboratory and lapidary where he cut and confectioned large amounts of gemstones for use by other jewelers. In the 1990ies, Charles owned Extreme Shopping Television, a network station specialized in selling jewelry to the public.

After all these years of adventures and amazing experiences in all areas of the gemstone and jewelry value chain, Charles has decided to give the last years of his professional life to an initiative which offers something new and unique to jewelry customers around the world: Jewelry of great value and beauty, designed for the energetic impact they have on the wearer. Charles wants not only to bring exceptional designs to the market place, but also to improve the living conditions of the often very poor people at the origin of your jewelry: The miners, cutters, setters and casters who produce the gemstones and jewelry he has traded with his whole life.

That’s why 1% of GEMiracle’s™ revenue is being reinvested into the livelihoods of the people of South East Asia who’s expertise, love and dedication goes into the exceptional jewelry of GEMiracle.

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