Pablo Macias was born in Carlin, Nevada, a small town 20 miles west of Elko, where the local population of Latinos was small. He has lived in Las Vegas since 1990.

He is the youngest of nine children born to Sofia and Tomas Macias, who met and married while living in Utah. Tomas was born in the United States and worked as a railroad laborer. Sofia was Mexican born and found work as a maid to help provide for their family.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Maila Aganon emigrated with her parents in 1992, after she completed her first semester of college. She describes as "typical" her youth as the youngest child (with brothers 5 and 7 years older) of a teacher who worked in another village and a father who worked out of the country. Although independent, she was part of a tightly knit village. The household spoke three languages: her mother's dialect, her father's dialect, and Tagalog.