Oral history interview with Robert Kim conducted by Kristel Peralta, Cecilia Winchell, Ayrton Yamaguchi, and Vanessa Concepcion on March 05, 2021 for the Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. In this interview, Kim describes his career in law. He talks about his Korean roots, the model minority myth, and experiencing racial discrimination. Lastly, Kim discusses the Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, his involvement with the Asian Bar Association of Las Vegas, and the importance of electing Asian Americans into political positions.

Jerry Tarkanian, legendary and formidable basketball coach, met his match the day he was called before student court at Fresno State College and had to face as one of his judges Lois Esther Huter. Lois, a no-nonsense military daughter, eventually agreed to date Tarkanian and to marry him. The City of Las Vegas got lucky when UNLV recruited Lois’s husband as basketball coach. After picking cotton in California’s Central Valley Lois earned her Master’s degree in speech pathology and holds national certifications in speech pathology, language, and audiology. In 1969 she opened California’s first private day school for the hearing impaired, Oralingua School for the Hearing Impaired in Whittier. In Las Vegas she taught hearing-impaired children in her home on an individual and pro-bono basis. In this interview Lois recalls her teaching career, debates in deaf education, her 12 years on Clark County School District School Board, and the people and the neighborhoods that make up Las Vegas’s Ward 1, the area she has represented on the Las Vegas City Council continuously since 2005.