Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Born in Mexico, Francisco was a child when his father received permission to immigrate to the US with his younger children. Upon graduating from high school in California, he moved to Las Vegas where one of his sisters lived. It was 1994 and jobs were plentiful; he would find his way through several positions. Then in early 2000 he was hired to be a dishwasher, on the graveyard, at the recently opened Paris Hotel. It was a Culinary Union job; by 2002 he was a shop steward and finding better positions at Paris. He continues to work at the Paris Hotel as a fry cook. In 2008, he was a citizen and proudly voted in his first presidential election.

José Armando Elique was born on February 14, 1944 in New York City. Born to Puerto Rican parents that immigrated to the United States in the 20s, Elique spent his childhood in both New York and Puerto Rico. Raised in the South Bronx, Elique’s family were part of the first pioneros from Puerto Ricans to settle in New York City in the twentieth century. Elique served as a radar man in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War on the USS Purdey. After his service, Elique applied to the Port Authority Police Department where his first big assignment included going undercover and investigating gang activity. Over the course of the next 22 years, he rose through the rankings becoming the assistant chief in charge of overseeing six facilities in the region. Elique is the first and only Latino to reach such rank with the Port Authority. Elique moved to Nevada in 2000 and became the chief of UNLV Police Services. Prior to coming to UNLV, he served as the University Director of Public Safety for the City University of New York (CUNY). Elique is also a member of the National Latino Police Officers Association, an organization that helps train Latino officers on contemporary issues and promote the advancement of Latinos in the police force. As police chief, Elique has fought for the hiring of new police officers to better serve UNLV’s campus and student body. As Chief of Police, Elique oversaw the response of his team to secure the campus and to provide for the needs of those seeking refuge at Thomas and Mack Center on the night of October 1, 2017. Chief Elique is also part of the Remembering 1 October oral history project where he reflected on that night, the role of campus police, coordination with Metro Police, purpose of the Fusion Center, command post, Emergency Operation Center for business continuity, and preparedness of urgent situation and active shooters. He is a graduate of Adelphi University and of Northwestern University’s Traffic Institute of Police Administration and the Police Executive Research Forum’s Senior Management Institute for Police.

Interviewed by Barbara Tabach. Monserrath Hernández and Maribel Estrada Calderón also participate in the questioning. Born in Mexico, came to live in Las Vegas in 1985. Graduate of UNLV in Journalism and a reporter of Public Safety for the Las Vegas Sun. Ricardo covered the 1 October shooting, the killing of two police officers and other traumatic news of the community.

Interviewed by Monserrath Hernández. A native Las Vegan, Justin Favela reminisces about growing up on the east side of the Las Vegas Valley. Favela provides insights about what he refers to as the caste system he is part of, how skin color makes a difference in social hierarchies, and his personal evaluations of the litany of terms such as Latinx, Latino/a, Hispanic etc. He discusses values impressed upon him by his family, especially his grandmothers; one is Guatemalan and the other Mexican. Favela was born in 1986 and discusses his universe where pop culture, gender, ethnicity, history, and Latinidad mix. He talks about his personal artistic expressions and the two podcast series he has created and hosts.

Jillian Hrushowy arrived in Las Vegas in 1959 as part of a company hired to appear at the El Rancho Vegas Hotel in a production called La Nouvelle Eve. She has remained here (other than three short-term contracts in Reno, Nevada) until present day. She is now the production manager for Legends in Concert at the Imperial Palace Hotel. She was an only child, born in Rhodesia to English parents and raised in a home with servants and tutors. Her mother exposed her to the arts at an early age. Jillian took dancing lessons from the age of three years until she began dancing professionally. When she was fifteen years old, both parents agreed it was time for her to leave Rhodesia and finish her education in England. Living alone was difficult and lonely, but it afforded her a wealth of opportunities otherwise unavailable. She worked as a dancer in small, local productions while still in high school. When only eighteen, she got a job dancing in La Nouvelle Eve in Paris which eventually came to Las Vegas. This interview focuses on the years from Jillian’s arrival in 1959 until she retired from dancing in 1979. It follows her transitions from dancer, to principal dancer to production manager. [The first twenty minutes of the tape is warped and the text is garbled. The transcriber has lightly edited the transcript.]

On May 8, 1976, James Thomas Griffin interviewed former casino dealer Midge Innis (born September 23rd, 1928 in Neligh, Nebraska) in her apartment in Las Vegas, Nevada about her life in Southern Nevada. The two discuss her occupational history as well as how she met her husband. The interview concludes Innis’ thoughts on environmental and social shifts in Las Vegas.

On January 20, 1975, collector James M. Greene interviewed housewife, Dorothy Kelsey (born May 28, 1916 in Kingman, Arizona) in her home in Nelson, Nevada. This interview covers the early days of Nelson, Searchlight, and Las Vegas, as Mrs. Kelsey offers an in-depth personal narrative on the life of a local old-timer. The interview concludes with a discussion on hotels and casinos.