Stavan Corbett’s ancestral legacy is a criss-cross of Mexican roots through his mother’s side with Russian and Polish Jew on his father’s side. He was named Steven at birth, and later altered the spelling to Stavan as a recognition of the blending of his cultural backgrounds. Though he has a tanned Latino look, he did not learn Spanish until electing to study it in high school. His mother and his grandparents saw assimilation as a better path for their future and that of the next generations.

Meli Calvo Pulido was born in Mexico City and immigrated to the United States with her parents and eight siblings. In 1975, at 11:00 p.m. she woke up to the Silver Slipper on the Las Vegas Strip. She was raised on Las Vegas’s 28th Street, where she helped her family and their neighbors by becoming the neighborhoods unofficial translator. The need to serve her community and the hardships faced by her family and the families around her translated into her work after she graduated from what is now Southeast Career Technical Academy.