In 1981, Doris Rodriguez (center) moved to Las Vegas from Topeka, Kansas, with her husband and young son. In 1983, her younger sister, Yvette Carrero (right) and her boyfriend moved to Las Vegas from Lorain, Ohio. The next year, 1984, her brother David Carrero (left), his wife and young son also moved to Las Vegas. In 1985, Doris' sister, Elizabeth and her husband moved here with their two daughters from Lorain, Ohio. In the years since moving to Las Vegas, Doris gave birth to another son as did her brother's wife. Such interfamilial migration patterns and subsequent family expansions are responsible in large part for the impressive growth of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Gwendolyn K. Walker arrived in North Las Vegas in 1962 from Houston, Texas, as a five-year-old with her parents, two brothers, and her cousins. The Walker family at first moved to a rented house on D Street, and Gwen attended Kit Carson Elementary School for first grade. Her mother enrolled in nursing school, so she sent Gwen back to Delhi, Louisiana, to be raised by her grandmother. In Delhi Gwen picked cotton with her aunt while she was in the second grade. Gwen returned to North Las Vegas to live with her mother and complete elementary school at Jo Mackey before matriculating to J. D. Smith Elementary School for junior high school and then to Clark High School. Later she attended UNLV. Gwen and her mother joined Saint James Catholic Church at H Street and Washington Avenue, but after she returned from Delhi she joined Second Baptist Church, where she became close with a cohort of friends that remained strong even as she experienced racism and bullying and love for the first time.