Matthew O'Brien is a journalist, author, and college instructor who is known for his nonfiction book Beneath the Neon about homeless people living underground in the Las Vegas Valley. He lived in Las Vegas from 1997-2017. O'Brien was born in Washington D.C. but grew up in Atlanta, GA, where he graduated from the University of West Georgia in 1995. He also earned an MFA from UNLV. O'Brien was a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008.

Harvey J. Fuller (1919-2004) was raised in Southern California, attending college before joining the army air corp during World War II. After the war, he joined the Los Angeles police department, serving from 1946 until 1977. An inveterate collector, Fuller took up collecting gaming tokens after seeing a display at Harvey's Resort Hotel in the late 1960s.

"Interviewed by Vanessa Concepcion and Stefani Evans. Twins Estrellita "Estelle" and Julieta "Julia" Elliott were born in Manila and raised in Cebu City by their maternal grandparents. Their lawyer grandfather and Spanish professor grandmother raised them with a tricultural identity (Spanish, Filipino, and American) but with emphasis on their Castilian Spanish heritage. When they were twelve and their grandfather died, they went to live with their parents in Maryland, where their father was an educator and author and their mother was a concert pianist.

"Interviewed by Stefani Evans. Arriving in Las Vegas in 2015 directly from her hometown in Cebu Province, Philippines, Lucela M. Wattin was struck by the dry climate, "like an oven!" But she immediately felt at home in her apartment near Spring Mountain Road and Chinatown, because she could buy familiar food items, and because her new next door neighbor also came from Cebu Province.

Kim You Taing, a Cambodian-Chinese refugee discusses his childhood during the Cambodian Wars, and how his family survived fleeing from village to village to escape the Rouge and gunfire occurring at that time. After a tragic incident where his two siblings died from drowning in the village river. his mother decided they need to get out of Cambodia to get a better life. His father who was Chinese would be captured and killed by the government just for being Chinese.