Robert Wilner, born Robert Morris was born April 19, 1970 in Encino, California. He moved to Las Vegas, Nevada when he was six months old. From a young age, he wanted to change his last name to match his adoptive parents’, Martin and Linda, last name. That wish became a reality when he was eighteen when his parents were able to find an attorney. Wilner worked as a realtor alongside his mother.
When Kenneth Fong was born November 11 1955, the family lived in a modest home on 20th and Stewart in Las Vegas, Nevada. When he entered third-grade, his parents moved his family to a newer subdivision near Rancho and West Charleston Avenue: the Scotch 80s. Their new custom home on Silver Avenue reflected Asian architecture and the family’s Chinese cultural heritage.
Lois Goodall was born July 18, 1938 in Odessa, Missouri to a father who was a farmer and a teacher mother. Goodall went to college to become a teacher, and her freshman year met a young sophomore gentleman by the name of Pat Goodall. They married and while Goodall attended graduate school at the University of Missouri, she taught fifth grade.
Greg McCurdy is a native Las Vegan who was born February 09, 1961 and raised in West Las Vegas, Nevada with his five siblings. Though he was young at the time, he remembers the turmoil of the late 1960s in Las Vegas and the local Civil Rights Movement.
Growing up, McCurdy loved playing baseball but also mowed lawns and worked at the McDonald's restaurant on Bonanza Street. At the age of 22, in 1983, he joined the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Dell Ray Rhodes was born February 26, 1947 and was raised in Louisiana. When her grandmother fell ill in 1950, Rhodes’ mother wanted to nurse her and made a temporary visit to Las Vegas, Nevada. She remained, and this is how three-year-old Rhodes came to live in the Las Vegas area. The family resided on the Westside where she attended Westside Elementary School, Madison Elementary School, Jim Bridger Middle School, and graduated from Rancho High School. Rhodes married young and worked a variety of jobs between the births of her seven children.
David Torjman was born March 4, 1939 and raised in Fez, Morocco and was educated in trades at the ORT Vocational School. He then studied at Sunderland Talmudical College in England before immigrating to the United States. In 1964, he was recruited to teach at Temple Beth Sholom. Soon after, Torjman met Iris Schwartz who had moved to Las Vegas, Nevada to live with her aunt. Less than two years later, they had a New York wedding and then a local wedding thrown by the Sisterhood at Temple Beth Sholom. Torjman was a Hebrew school teacher until 1975.
Mirna Preciado was born July 21, 1956 and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. When her family decided to immigrate in 1980, she decided to reach for her American dream. Preciado’s husband wanted her to be a stay-at-home mom, but the idea of working and buying her own bread intrigued her. She became a waitress at the new Margarita’s Restaurant in the Frontier Hotel. Though she liked her work, she was bothered by the other workers with requests to join the Culinary Union Local 226. Soon, those workers became her guardian angels.