David Cantong was two years old the first time his family took a leap in the dark. His parents had left Ecuador for Los Angeles for his father's job sponsorship, only to be blocked at the border by an old quota law limiting how many people of Chinese descent could enter the country. His mother went ahead pregnant, not yet knowing it, and gave birth to David Cantong's sister on American soil while his father searched for a way to bring the rest of the family over. A lawyer dra

Jorge Ribeiro grew up in West Virginia in a small coal town where strangers already knew who he was. His father was the town surgeon but made a point of being home for dinner almost every night, even after a full day at the hospital. People expressed their gratitude towards him however they could—sometimes with a bag of tomatoes or a fresh-baked pie. "If I'm walking down the street, people say, 'Oh, there's Dr. Ribeiro's son,'” Mr. Ribeiro tells me. "I'm like, who are you, ri

John Sorensen got his first job delivering newspapers at nine years old, using the freedom it bought him to wander museums, study languages, teach school, and travel the world. Eighty years later, he still hasn't outgrown his curiosity. This is his story.

Jane Lim was born premature during a Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1937, placed in a hole in a broken wall by a doctor who didn't know what else to do. She survived and went on to live in five countries, raise a family, travel the world, sing in a choir for sixty years, and arrive at eighty-nine years old with nothing more to ask for. This is her story.