Valentina was born on October 2, 1935, in the Transbaikal region, into an intelligent family. Her grandfather was of noble blood, and her father held a managerial position at a railway enterprise. However, Valentina's childhood was not as peaceful as one might expect.
“When World War II began, I was only six years old. We lived at the Karymskaya station, where trains passed in different directions. My father worked as the deputy chief of the depot and, to feed the family, he brought food from the cafeteria. At that time, getting bread or grains was a real problem,” she recalls.
After the war ended, when the country began to recover, trains passed through the station to Mongolia. Valentina's father exchanged the grains brought by the train drivers for bread to support the family. The girl had to walk three kilometers to school in severe frost, sometimes returning home with numb feet.
“When I got home, my grandmother would put my feet in cold water, gradually adding hot water to warm them up. I had to sleep by the open oven,” she shares.
After finishing school, Valentina enrolled in the Chita Military School. In 1954, she met a young policeman there, whom she soon married. The couple was assigned to a closed military unit, where Valentina received her specialty and became the head nurse at the hospital of a secret atomic garrison. Later, her husband received orders to serve in the Kyrgyz SSR, and the family moved to Kara-Balta, where Valentina still lives today.
“When we arrived, everything around was actively being built. The village of Kosh-Tegirmen was divided by a barrier into two parts, and supplies came directly from Moscow. My husband was appointed an investigator in the local police, and I got a job at the hospital as a staff nurse, where I later specialized and became an operating room nurse,” she recounts.
At that time, there were four operating departments functioning in Kara-Balta, and Valentina assisted surgeons who had trained in Moscow. “Some surgeries lasted up to 12 hours,” she notes.
Initially, the young family lived in a rented house, but in 1970, on Lenin's birthday, they received an apartment in a new building. Valentina's husband, Mikhail, held the rank of lieutenant colonel and served in various places, including Germany and the Transbaikal Military District. Although he spoke little about his service, one story remained in memory — about how a cunning criminal robbed traders at the lower market of Kara-Balta, distracting them with the help of a girl.
The couple lived together for 61 years, raised two children, and never quarreled. Valentina retired in 1991, when her pension was only 132 rubles. However, she was not used to sitting idle and took a job as a cleaner at a school, continuing to help her neighbors — administering drips and knitting. Despite her age, she continues to care for others, as the desire to help people has become an integral part of her life.
