When she’s not helping clients select diamonds for custom engagement-ring settings, Karla Lewis, a gemologist who has gone so far as to collaborate with Vatican officials to fulfill an unlikely request for a remake of a ring worn by Pope John Paul II, raises the gold bar on philanthropy. “Some people think of holding chili dinners to raise money, but when I think fundraising, I think diamonds,” Lewis says. One benevolent bauble, a black diamond pendant she designed, recently fetched enough money to help Wunder’s cemetery get a new tractor. The Jewelers Row design house also specializes in those unusually shaped gems from the Indian and Pacific Oceans, South Sea pearls.
