Treva Roles was born March 10, 1928 to Louis and Katherine Smith, and spent her childhood in Erie, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois with five other siblings. During the Great Depression, Roles’s father used his entrepreneurial skills to turn his traveling salesman profession into a family business, selling personal inventions. Eventually, he decided to sell the business, and buy a motel out west to retire. The motel ended up being the Fair Price Motel in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Roles soon moved out to help the family run it.

Billy Paul Smith was born in 1942 and educated in segregated black schools in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Texarkana, Texas. He graduated from high school at fifteen and enrolled at Prairie View A&M University, where he trained with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). He earned his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry and in 1964, his Master’s degrees in chemistry and math. Smith’s math and science background steered him to the United States Army Chemical Corps, where he was quickly selected to join a new team.

In 1965, Chilean-born Mariteresa Rivera-Rogers (b. 1943) and husband Enrique Rivera set out on their adventurous leap and moved to the United States. Sponsored by an aunt living in Las Vegas, their resident visas took only three months to process—a task that would take years in today’s world she explains. Their first home was on Convention Center Drive, though they and their four children would experience several different neighborhoods over the years.

Meli Calvo Pulido was born in Mexico City and immigrated to the United States with her parents and eight siblings. In 1975, at 11:00 p.m. she woke up to the Silver Slipper on the Las Vegas Strip. She was raised on Las Vegas’s 28th Street, where she helped her family and their neighbors by becoming the neighborhoods unofficial translator. The need to serve her community and the hardships faced by her family and the families around her translated into her work after she graduated from what is now Southeast Career Technical Academy.

Michael Saltman was born October 09, 1942 and raised in Flint, Michigan. Saltman earned his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University in 1964 and his Juris Doctor from Wayne State University Law School in 1967. From 1968 to 1975, he was an attorney in London, England and Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of International Operations at Shareholders Capital Corporation in Munich, Bavaria.

“I identify with being part of the AAPI community, and our family has adopted Las Vegas as our town, again doing what we can to make impact because we feel that this town has really blessed us with so much opportunity. It’s our joy to be able to give back.”