Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, in 1973, Brendan Ly was one of seven children. Because his father fought with the Americans, the family was in danger daily. They escaped by boat in 1978-79 to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, then to Raleigh, North Carolina, for one year and finally to San Jose, California, where Brendan grew up. From the time he was eight years old, Brendan contributed to the family income picking fruit and vegetables in the summers and doing back-of-the-house labor in catering and retail.

Second-generation physician Kochy Tang arrived in Las Vegas in 1999 to complete her Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) residency; she stayed because she became part of a congenial medical community. Tang's father, Y. Y. Tang, M.D., left China in the early 1940s to go to France and then to Boston to attend Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1945. He was drafted into the U.S. Army for the Korean War and served in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) unit. After the war, he practiced alternative medicine in San Francisco and Reno.

One of four children born to a farming family in Udon Thani, Thailand, Pom Fritz is a retired guest room attendant (Flamingo, Desert Inn, and Mirage) and member of Culinary Workers Union Local 226, serving the Union as committee member, shop steward, Trustee, and member of the Executive Board. Pom came to the U.S. with her second husband, an American, in 1972. After stops at Air Force bases near Sacramento and in North Carolina, she moved to Riverside, California, where her younger sister then lived.