Mark Ruiz

My name is Mark A. Ruiz. I'm from Southern California, l considered a career as a Chef and went to school in the late 80’s for Restaurant Hotel management. I left California to be on my own and I moved to Washington for a few years. After moving around some I landed in Eugene Oregon where I managed a restaurant and Bakery for a number of years. I met my wife and we had a daughter in 1997. I moved to Boise Idaho to be closer to family in 2002 and I've been here since.

I have loved rocks since I was a kid and in 2006 I bought a Dremel and some bits from a Gem and Mineral show. I also bought a jar of Australian Opal and I taught myself to carve it as a hobby. Everything I made went to family and friends for birthdays and holidays. In 2015 during a cold snap I lost a very expensive piece of Lightning Ridge black opal and was devastated. I went to my favorite rock shop and saw Fire Agate for the first time. I couldn't believe it was real with the drastic play of colors.

I was able to buy 6 pieces of rough material from a small bag of rough they had. I looked online for informing on working with Fire Agate and it was extremely limited and difficult to access. I checked Facebook and found a page called Fire Agate fans, there were only about 65 members. I taught myself to carve through trial and error. I was enthralled by the stone so I would sometimes speed 12-15 hours carving. As I became more proficient, someone reached out to me and offered some material that was a lot better quality. The first package was a mix of 3 types mixed together. Slaughter Mountain, Deer Creek and Aguascalientes Fire Agate. My first challenge was to correctly sort it out. When I proved I could do it, I was finally allowed to buy more.

I kept saying I wanted to teach people to carve, so my daughter suggested making a YouTube video. I was very shy but gave it a try in 2016 and I found I was learning as I taught. I would gain insight into the hobby and myself. After the first few videos I stopped stammering and saying “umm” and I felt confident. I started getting feedback from people all over the world. I started selling on eBay and offering free coaching on carving fire agate. I taught people from Australia, Thailand, Kuwait, Italy and a number of other countries. I made a vow to myself to keep teaching this, because of some very touching emails. People who broke out of their shell, or were able to rehab, or just gain confidence in themselves. I feel so blessed to be able to work with rocks and help people.

Earlier this year a Miner from the San Carlos Apache accepted my Facebook friends request. After a short time he reached out to me with an amazing opportunity to work with world class Fire Agate as well as a number of other gems. He even said I could help teach my passion and help distribute minerals on behalf of the family. It was a life changing proposal and I was honored to accept.

I'm a new business person who is excited for the growth potential. Remember me saying that Fire Agate group had 65 members? It now has well over seven thousand members and a number of other off chute groups regarding Fire Agate. My YouTube channel has well over 100 videos and 1,700 subscribers. I see Fire Agate rapidly gaining interest like it did in the seventies. But nobody shared the information and the tools were lacking, so it remained mostly unknown. I run the Mark's Minerals page on Facebook and here is a link to my YouTube channel.
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