Valerie Wiener shares a cookie and a story with first-graders during the annual birthday party, which she has sponsored at Louis Wiener, Jr. Elementary School since 1996. Wiener is wearing a school shirt.
Construction materials are staged in a lot near the newly finished homes along Gracious Way in the Cadence development in Henderson. For decades the western neighborhoods of Henderson experienced explosive growth as the city moved from small industrial town clustered around the World War II era plants to Las Vegas suburbs and the state's second largest city. Cadence hopes to change that with its large masterplanned community north of East Lake Mead Parkway and Boulder Highway.