A $100 station wagon failed to get Bill Hornbuckle out of his home state. A borrowed van got him to Las Vegas, where the future MGM Resorts CEO began a career measured in hotel shifts, opening nights and opportunities passed along.

James York helped open North Las Vegas’s first hometown bank in 2005. Through a recession, a borrowed name and a generation of new bankers, he has kept returning to the same question: what can a bank do for the place it calls home?