Sheri Biesinger

For Sheri Biesinger, West Valley is a place built on beginnings, open fields turned into neighborhoods, generations arriving and staying.

She remembers kids playing outside until dark, neighbors who knew each other by name. “Even though we didn’t have much, we had each other,” she says. She believes that sense of neighborliness endures, even as the city changes.

It’s easy to find just outside her front door. Sheri lives on Warr Barton Circle, named for the family that homesteaded the land generations ago. Kitty-corner sits Delton Lanes, a bowling alley opened more than 70 years ago, still owned by the same family. Sheri bowled there in gym class and spent summer afternoons at its café. “It’s been a wonderful place for the community to hang out,” she says.

Maintaining the memories of what came before has become her life’s work. What began as collecting family photographs, newspaper clippings, and oral histories grew into something larger after an older neighbor, who had watched the city transform, told her, “No one will remember we were here.” Sheri says, “That made me realize how many people carry that feeling. That their lives might fade without being acknowledged.”

For more than 30 years, Sheri has collected the stories people fear will be lost: letters, artifacts, and photographs that trace generations of life in West Valley. Some are simple: school pictures, handwritten notes, recipes passed down through families. Others carry history: old images and farming equipment from when West Valley was nothing but alfalfa fields, and letters from residents recounting the sacrifices families made to support the war effort.

“Before they were history, they were simple lives,” she says. “In those letters, you can feel everything. They talk about work, missing each other, trying to build a better life.”

One image has stayed with her: a photograph of a young Thai family, standing on the steps of their new home in Westview, smiling. Proof that West Valley has long been a place where people begin again.

Sheri points to the many places here that hold meaning, especially schools and churches, gathering places whose significance is easy to overlook. “Those spaces hold moments that changed entire family trajectories,” she says.

The building she has fought hardest for is an empty church known for its lighthouse architecture, which she believes would make a perfect museum—somewhere the artifacts she has spent decades collecting could finally live in public view.

Until there is a permanent home for that history, she houses her collections at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, a gathering place that celebrates all that West Valley is. There, she displays pieces from her archives, rotating them through gallery exhibitions so that residents can see themselves reflected in the past. “People think history is just a series of dates. But history is people’s life day-to-day.”

West Valley’s growth has all happened in less than 100 years. The University of Utah is building a hospital on land that was once an alfalfa field, and Sheri sees opportunity, provided investment goes beyond construction. “If they truly listen to residents, the families, elders, and youth, this partnership will last forever,” she says.

For all the change, Sheri sees something worth protecting. “I hope people don’t just see growth as all the new buildings,” she says. “I hope they see the people who are here and have been here who care deeply about each other and about their community.”

Perhaps nothing captures that resilience more plainly than Delton Lanes. The bowling alley has outlasted the businesses that opened and closed around it. It is not a museum, and it holds no artifacts, but it is exactly the kind of ordinary, enduring place Sheri spends her days trying to protect.

Alex Higuera

Ask Alex Higuera about West Valley City, and he pauses before answering. The place he grew up has long carried a reputation he believes is deeply unfair.

“The biggest misconception is that the westside is dangerous,” he says. “It’s an overgeneralization. There’s so much to love about the city.”

Alex doesn’t shy away from real challenges; he knows that acknowledging them is how communities identify what resources they need. But he is firm—those challenges don’t define West Valley. What defines it, he says, is connection.

“We’re resilient,” he says. “We’re connected. There are so many backgrounds and cultures here, and we embrace that. West Valley has its own subculture. You can feel the community.”

That sense of connection took root early at a place that, for Alex, represents the heart of West Valley. Known over the years as Garcia’s Imports and later Western Imports, the outdoor market, or swap meet, was central to his childhood. Every weekend, his family went together to help his dad search for construction tools. The vendors, or puestos, were run by neighbors who quickly became like family.

“It was a place where people convened,” Alex recalls. “There was food, music, different smells, and different languages. All the personalities were there.”

As he got older, he worked there, too. Family friends brought him in for the summers, and it became a shared effort with his dad, his brother, and even his grandmother visiting from Mexico, who had run her own puesto, or market stall, back home. Watching her left a lasting impression.

“She didn’t just sell things,” he says. “She built relationships. She got to know people.”

That lesson stayed. The swap meet was a place where connection came first. “I learned empathy there,” Alex says. “That we all have problems, dreams, hopes. Even if we’re different, we can come together.”

Today, Alex carries perspective into his work with young people, advocating for mental health and opportunity. He sees both urgency and possibility in the youth he serves. “Kids are in survival mode,” he says. “That stress affects their mental and physical health.”

He pushes back on the idea that resilience is innate. “Resilience is something you learn. You need support to get through hard things; it doesn’t happen on its own.”

Alex speaks from experience. The son of Mexican immigrants, he once couldn’t picture himself in higher education. What changed everything was someone believing in him, mentors through programs like Gear Up, who helped him see a different path.

He eventually made his way to the University of Utah, where he found community through his department and first-generation college student groups. “I found spaces where my values aligned,” he says. “That’s what helped me finish.” Now, he's working to create that same sense of belonging for others.

He graduated debt-free with degrees in psychology and ethnic studies and is now eyeing a master’s degree in clinical psychology, with the goal of expanding mental health access in underrepresented communities. Alex also lends his voice to the University’s new Eccles Health Campus in West Valley as a member of its community advisory group.

“It only takes one person to say, ‘I believe in you,’” he says. Now, through connection, through community, and the powerful act of showing up, he’s giving back, too.