Interviewed by Monserrath Hernández and Barbara Tabach. Jahaira Farias is a graduate of Western High School, a Marine Corps veteran, and a founder of a local chapter of the Women Marines Association. At the time of this oral history, Jahaira worked for US Congresswoman Susie Lee. Jahaira Farias was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, and grew up on the west side of town. She has summertime memories of her travels to Mexico, where she was able to connect with her family's heritage and language. During her years at Western High School, she participated in varsity sports and was the armed drill team commander. After graduation, Jahaira enlisted into the Marine Corps, where she specialized as a transport operator and hazardous material transporter and served two deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her transition to civilian life included work in security at Caesars Palace. When she took a position with as district representative for Congresswoman Susie Lee, her focus was to assist veterans and immigrants. She helped Rep. Lee develop community outreach towards the Latinx community and Veterans. Jahaira is the president of the Las Vegas NV-3 Sagebrush Marines chapter of the Women Marines Association, an organization she helped establish and rebuild. The WMA helps veterans find their footing again through mentoring and support, and conducts community engagement by fostering the same camaraderie found in the Corps. After surviving a motorcycle accident, Jahaira's recovery is nothing short of miraculous, going from being in a wheelchair to competing in Tough Mudder. Now extremely active, Jahaira is an avid hiker and certified yoga instructor, specializing in trauma recovery. A polyglot, Jahaira formally studied Arabic and Russian, and speaks English, Spanish, and Pashto, and received an associate degree in Russian from the College of Southern Nevada.

In 1984, with the advice of his father ringing in his ears, Brad Nelson uprooted his wife and two children from their Denver home and moved them to Henderson, Nevada, where he would begin a new adventure in shaping the new master-planned community of Green Valley with Mark Fine and American Nevada Corporation (ANC). Nelson, lifelong Nebraskan and only child of his parents, arrived armed with a Bachelor's degree in landscape architecture with urban planning option, a Master's degree in urban planning, and fifteen years of planning and executive experience with the national firm of Harmon, O'Donnell and Henniger Planning Consultants. He arrived in time to plan Green Valley's first village, the Village of Silver Spring. By the time he left ANC for Lake Las Vegas in 1999, his work was done and most large parcels had been sold. As Nelson puts it, by 1999 ANC was "out of land, and I'm a land guy." Lake Las Vegas had plenty of undeveloped land, so "land guy" Nelson a chief operating officer