Las Vegas, Nevada native Dennis Lee Askew is a graduate of Valley High School. In the late 1940s his family moved to Las Vegas from Florida where they were involved in gambling operations. His father worked at the Sands Hotel for thirty years. As a young man, Dennis worked as a bus boy at the Sands, and later moved to southern California after his high school graduation. In the mid 1970s, Dennis led a successful rock band called Universe that played around southern California and Las Vegas. They disbanded and Dennis worked for Odyssey Records in Las Vegas.

Yvanna Cancela (born 1987) arrived in Las Vegas the summer of 2009. Fresh off a summer internship with Sen. Harry Reid in Washington, D.C., she was hired to work on Reid’s reelection

campaign. Yvanna’s political talents were blossoming as was her affection for southern Nevada.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and raised in Miami, Florida, Yvanna’s parents immigrated from Cuban. She received her Bachelor of Arts in communications in 2010 from Northwestern University.

Born into a tumultuous Colombia, Juliana was about five years old when her parents relocated Juliana and her two older sisters to the United States. For a time, they settled in Chicago, then Arizona. She describes an upbringing that was safe and privileged. Education and preservation of bilingual speaking skills were held in high regard.

Elaine Mariko Okamura was the sixth of seven children born to her parents in Honolulu, Hawai'i. She tells of her father, who left Japan to find his father in Hawai'i, and her mother who was born in Kauai but was sent to Japan as a five-year-old to care for her grandmother. Her father owned the only grocery store in their area, and she recalls him doing his calculations on the abacus. Elaine's knowledge of Japanese helped her to become a stewardess for the Pacific Rim for Pan American Airlines.