Born and raised in Palm Desert, California, Cynthia Leung is the first Chinese-American woman elected as Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge; she was the only Asian child in her elementary school, and she grew up surrounded by the arts. She was the younger daughter of a Chinese brush artist mother and an architect father, and her older sister went to The Julliard School to study piano.

After a 13-year courtship spanning the Pacific Ocean, Arlene and Mach Manuel began married life in San Diego, where their daughter was born. The couple is from two worlds. Arlene was raised in the Philippines, where her parents sacrificed to send her to the best Catholic school in Manila and to college for two separate degrees. In contrast, Mach's San Diego upbringing was that of a working-class "American" child who connected with his Filipino heritage on his first visit to the Philippines as an adult.

Zhen "Reika" Sun was born and raised in Shanghai, China, during the one-child policy. Because her parents both worked, she was raised by nannies. Wanting a better life for their daughter, Reika's parents immigrated to the U.S. in 2009, choosing to settle in Las Vegas because her mother's sister lived here. However, before Reika could join her parents in Las Vegas, they sent her to an English as a Second Language program at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.