Elizabeth Brooke

It was the late 1990s, and 3,000 young actors around the world were scouted for the role of a lifetime. On the ride home from school, Devon Michael’s mom told him he’d be auditioning for "The Phantom Menace," one of the most anticipated movies ever. From 3,000, the producers narrowed it down to three, and soon Michael was at Skywalker Ranch doing a test screen with George Lucas and Natalie Portman.

Angela Chaddlesone McCarthy was a teenage mother raised on a Native American reservation who overcame great odds to become a Kiowa tribe legislator in Oklahoma.

A devout Christian, Jerry Givens was Virginia’s chief executioner, before he became an advocate of abolishing the death penalty.

When his son-in-law was killed in a tragic car crash, World War II veteran Calvin Haworth became a surrogate parent and an activist against drunk driving in Minnesota.

A hard-working bricklayer from the projects, Humberto Trujillo helped build the main Phoenix post office — and rose to become his city’s first Hispanic postmaster.

Rosary Castro-Olega was a retired nurse who returned to the frontlines to fight the virus, ultimately becoming one of the Filipino-American nurses who were disproportionately killed by the virus.

A virtuoso jazz pianist and film composer tracks his family's lineage through his 91-year-old grandfather from Jim Crow Florida to the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In 1963, Ed Dwight Jr. was poised to be NASA’s first African-American astronaut, until suddenly he wasn’t.

In the mid-1960s, four teenagers from Liverpool were changing the face of pop music. Their names were Mary, Sylvia, Pam, and Val — the Liverbirds!

Kim Hill was a rising singer when she met a young rapper named will.i.am, but she quit the Black Eyed Peas just before they became famous.