Alex De Castroverde group up proud of his Cuban ancestry and embraced his parents’ stories of coming to be Americans.

Both parents, Vivian and Waldo De Castroverde, were teenagers as Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. Waldo actively fought against the Castro regime as a CIA trained paratrooper; during which he was arrested and was imprisoned for two years. Vivian was one of thousands of young Cubans who quietly entered the United States through Operation Peter Pan in the early 1960s.

Bill Schafer is an active member of the Las Vegas, Nevada lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community. He worked at the Las Vegas Bugle and served as managing editor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Subsequently, he was also involved with the Las Vegas Night Beat, another LGBTQ publication in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has a female impersonator identity known as Wilhelmina Parsons. He was ordained as a minister by the Universal Life Church under his given name and as Wilhelmina Parsons.

Architect Harry Hayden Whitely, born in 1890 in Bakersfield, California, studied drafting and worked as the chief draftsman for Twentieth Century Fox in 1920 after serving in World War I. Whiteley graduated in 1924 from the University of Southern California with a degree in engineering. He designed elegant residences in Beverly Hills before World War II, working among the architects Paul Revere Williams, Frank Taylor, and Adrian Wilson.

Stella Butterfield's family, the Goldbergs, was Jewish, and she was born in the Bronx. During World War II she worked for the Coast Guard in the steno pool in Washington, D.C. Stella moved to Santa Monica a few years later while the war was still going on and worked briefly as a riveter for Douglas Aircraft and then as a teletype operator for the Air Force but at Douglas Aircraft. Because she had a hard time getting a job because of antisemitism, she changed her name to Gilbert.

Marvelys Lopez-Omaña is a Venezuelan immigrant. Marvelys first arrived in Las Vegas in 1993 as a 17-year-old high school exchange student at Western High School. Her host family, who were Mormons, warmly welcomed the Catholic teenager and became fast friends.

Born in Sri Lanka [formerly Ceylon] in 1970 into a middle-class family, entrepreneur and Realtor Sanje Sedera speaks of his childhood, his Buddhist home life, and his schooling; of learning English during his two years as a high school exchange student in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia; of returning to Sri Lanka to complete high school, and of arriving in the U.S. in 1992 on a student visa to attend Idaho State University.

"James Oran “Jimmy” Porter, Esq. was born on August 29, 1941 in Washington, D.C. Jimmy passed away on January 27, 2016. In 1969, he founded The Porter Law Firm in Washington D.C. with a mission to act as a voice for the voiceless and to fight for those who are unable to fight for themselves. Several years later, Jimmy opened The Porter Law Firm in Las Vegas and was the second African- American attorney in the state of Nevada.