Background
Alex and his siblings were born to Madeline and Sherkel Qipao, in 26BBY.
Madeline was a geneticist with the Holowan Corporation, and Sherkel mustered out of the Republic’s Judicial Forces to become a vending machine re-stocker, so obviously, Madeline was the bread winner of the family.
While Alex was still a schoolboy, his mother was involved in one of the infamous “How Could The Same Stang Hit The Same MegaCorp Twice” incidents.
The Holowan Laboratories suffered the infamous Holowan Massacre during the....well, technically, at the end of, the 'Phlutdroid Project', when IG-88 droids gained sentience, went rogue, and either killed their creators on site, or hunted them down across the galaxy.
However, Holowan had already distanced itself from an earlier, eerily similar incident with Holowan Genetics, where that unit had been attempting to make Sarlaccs and related rooted creatures mobile, for military purposes.
One of their creations, the Rathtar, escaped confinement, and went on a rampage through the five storey facility. The creatures reproduce by fission, self-cloning when they have had too much to eat. The rathtar ate so many employees, that four other creatures had been fissioned out of it, before the site was levelled by a tactical warhead from the local security forces.
That the galaxy at large, believe the Rathtar to be a natural creature of evolution, is a testament to the Holowan cover-up, though there were dirty pants, and squeaky bottoms aplenty, when biologists found traces of sarlacc, etc’, within the rathtar DNA.
Madeline and some others had had enough warning of trouble, to get out to the landspeeder park, and as others around her were caught on tentacles, and snatched back to their doom, she broke into vehicles, discovered they wouldn’t drive, bailed out onto the ferrocrete, until she got to the nineteenth vehicle that she tried, and got the drokk out of dodge.
She declared “19” to be her lucky number, and had it added to the family name.
…Er, what do you mean, this was supposed to be about Alex?
Oh, alright then.
Lived on Ec Pand, where he had an idyllic childhood.
Sometimes his mother would be moved to other locations within the Holowan megacorp, and the family would move with her.
As a teenager, he worked some of the summer holidays at nearest Holowan facility that had an administration department, with the family vacationing nearby, or at least, on the same world.
Alex' first tours as a TIE Pilot, was working escort for the huge Imperial supply ship, Black Ice, which was reputed to be four times the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer.
His flight was moved cycled out, and took part in Operation Immediate Rescue, after which, he was assigned to the Darkest Night.