Thomas Kerestesi was born in Redding, California. Son of Austrian immigrants, Tom’s family relocated to Las Vegas in 1956 when his father was offered a job with the Cragin and Pike Insurance Agency. The Kerestesi family moved into McNeil Estates, the neighborhood where the father would live for nearly fifty years until his passing. Tom attended West Charleston Elementary School and Hyde Park Junior High School, before entering Bishop Gorman High School. In high school, his extra-curricular activities included tennis and participated in Boys State. After graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno with a major in Accounting, narrowly missing being drafted into the military, Tom moved to Los Angeles to begin in own career in insurance. Longing for home and newlywed, he soon moved back to Las Vegas with his wife Buffie, and joined Cragin and Pike as an agent alongside his father. Tom would remain at Cragin and Pike for the next 38 years, where he dealt with underwriting the gaming and construction industries. Tom has served as a member of the Las Vegas Rotary Club, president of the Nevada Independent Insurance Agents, and has been awarded Outstanding Alumni of the University of Nevada. Tom and Buffie have two children who both also still live in Las Vegas.

Karen Sarret Bartolo’s life in Las Vegas from 1948 to the present exemplifies the vast changes that took place in the social, cultural, and physical landscape of the city over the course of the twentieth century. Schools and businesses mentioned in interview are/were located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Karen Sarret Bartolo moved to Las Vegas from Reno at five years of age in 1948 with her parents, Jules James Sarret and Ila Burgess Sarret, and younger brother, Gordon. Upon arriving in the city her father opened Sarret's Office Supply, the family rented a small, two-bedroom house on Tenth Street, and Karen attended John S. Park Elementary School. Younger sister Lynn was born in Las Vegas...The Sarrets reveal how quickly Las Vegas and the Clark County School District grew in the second half of the twentieth century. Although Karen completed eighth grade at West Charleston Elementary before going to Las Vegas High School (one of the city’s two public high schools), her siblings attended Hyde Park Junior High school. Gordon then matriculated to Western High School, while Lynn graduated from Ed. W. Clark High School.