Ringko Felix didn’t consider himself a trailblazer when he arrived in Denver in the fall of 1998. He certainly didn’t anticipate becoming the seed for an entire community of Pacific Islanders that has since sprouted and grown in Colorado. When he first gazed upon the Denver skyline twenty years ago, he was simply exploring the city as a place where his family might resettle.

The idea of moving to the Mile High City had come from a close friend, Mikel Buliche, who was working in the Chelsea catering kitchen, then under contract with Continental Airlines at Denver International Airport. Buliche’s job duties involved prepping thousands of in-flight meals to be served each day to Continental customers cruising at 39,000 feet. Felix wasn’t particularly interested in the food-prep aspect of the gig. But Buliche, who’d come to Colorado for a university program and worked in the kitchen to make ends meet, persuaded Felix to join him at Chelsea when he mentioned the job’s two special flight benefits. Kitchen employees had access to standby flight tickets on planes that still had empty seats right before departure; they only had to cover taxes on the tickets. And there were also “buddy passes” for employees, fully paid flight vouchers that kitchen employees could give to friends or family members. Those tickets, too, were free, beyond the taxes that would be deducted from the employees’ paychecks.

Both perks were a draw for Felix, since he realized that he would be able not only to afford to visit family members in his homeland of Chuuk, one of the island states within the Federated States of Micronesia, but also to move them to Colorado. The collective islands of Chuuk State, all 46 square miles of them, have a population of 49,000 and are located some 6,500 miles from Denver, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Round-trip flights between Denver and Chuuk usually cost between $2,000 and $3,000. With the flight benefits from the Chelsea kitchen, the cost would be a fraction of that.

Moreover, Felix knew that he could get work in this country under a special visa arrangement that the United States has with three nations in the Pacific Islands. Under the Compact of Free Association, citizens of the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia can work in the U.S. indefinitely, even though they are not considered full-fledged U.S. citizens.

Micronesia is located about 6,500 miles from Denver in the Pacific Ocean. iStock and Wikipedia

Soon after Felix started working at the airport, he decided that his visit would turn into a permanent stay. He had already been looking around the United States, and had even done a stint in Seattle, but the flight benefits in Denver were a major selling point. After about a year of prepping meals, saving money and assessing education opportunities for his children, he used his buddy passes to fly his wife and eight kids to Colorado. Some of Felix’s children subsequently got their own jobs at the Chelsea kitchen, and it became a family affair. That second generation of workers used their own flight benefits to visit the islands and fly in additional family members and friends.

Over time, more and more Chuukese moved from the faraway islands to Denver; the migration that Felix had kickstarted created a community of roughly 1,000 Micronesians living in and around Denver today. Other groups of Pacific Islanders grew the same way, including an influx of approximately 400 people from the Marshall Islands. Today, 35 percent of the 600 workers at the Chelsea kitchen — approximately 210 people — are from the Pacific Islands.

But now that trend may be coming to an end.

The free-flight deals are in jeopardy. United Airlines, which has managed the Chelsea kitchen since merging with Continental Airlines in 2010, is currently threatening to take away the flight benefits in response to an organizing effort by workers at five of its kitchens across the country, including the one in Denver. In their campaign to unionize, workers are calling for better pay, job security and lower insurance costs. According to Joel Pally of Unite Here!, which is helping to organize the United Airlines employees and represents over 270,000 workers across the food service, airline, transportation and hotel industries, the catering department at United Airlines is the only non-management department in the company that does not already have a union.

But is becoming part of a union worth sacrificing the benefits that have allowed thousands of Pacific Islanders to congregate in Colorado? The original families who led the migration from Micronesia and the Marshall Islands think the answer is yes, even though they know that unionizing could leave them high and dry.

Sylvister Ralpho and Valerie Felix support unionizing despite the risk of losing flight benefits. Anthony Camera

On a recent Friday, Sylvister Ralpho and Valerie Felix tend to their one-year-old twins, both crying after waking up from a nap at the family’s home in Green Valley Ranch. Ralpho looks like he could use a nap himself; he just got off a twelve-hour shift at Chelsea. Valerie no longer works at the airport, but she did for five years. Now she has her hands full managing three kids, including a five-year-old daughter.

On the wall of their living room is a large banner bearing the twins’ faces. The parents recently hosted a huge first-birthday bash for the children, an important cultural event for Pacific Islanders, similar to what quinceañeras are for Latin American communities. Big celebrations are held in large, rented event spaces, with bountiful amounts of food set out for scores of attendees. Pacific Islanders living in Denver understand that their favorite homeland delicacies are not the easiest (or freshest) items to obtain in Colorado, and that list includes Ralpho’s go-to dish: thick slabs of raw tuna with a hint of soy sauce, lemon and lime. Colorado is not known for some other favorites, including tropical fruits such as mango, coconut and guava.