Last Friday, April Sanati grabbed her golf glove and started working on her swing in the backyard. She was getting ready for her first tournament the next day.
After hitting balls, she began to pick them up. That's when the young golfer found something shiny in the dirt.
"I told my dad it looked like a fake diamond," she said.
Her father, Gary Sanati, said he thought it was fake, perhaps a cubic zirconia. But he wanted to be sure, so he did a few tests.
"I went over to the sliding glass door, and it scratched the glass, so that was like the first sign," he said.
After the gem passed three more tests found on the Internet, Gary Sanati drove to the mall just before a jewelry store was about to close. Sure enough, the stone was a real diamond.
Of course, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and April Sanati is now the proud owner of a 1-carat diamond - valued at about $1,000.
How it got there and who it belonged to is a mystery to the Sanatis. They've owned the home for 10 years.
But April Sanati has a fun story to tell her friends in third grade. And to add to the fun, April was born in the month of April. What's her birthstone? A diamond.
