Olom is a tiny Yakutian village. Only several families live there, all of them elderly people. The taiga and swamps surround them. The closest city is 70 kilometers away. And there’s no phone connection nor no direct road link, either.
Karina Chikitova and her 21-year-old mother went there at the end of July 2014 – to visit their relatives. Karina was 3 years and 8 months old. On July 29, the girl woke up, had some ‘oladyi’ (aka thick pancakes) for breakfast and went outside to play with a puppy named Kyrachaan, which, translated from Yakutian, means “a little one”. And then disappeared.
That day, the girl’s mother was working at a hayloft; the girls’ grandmother was supposed to watch her. But, the old woman fell asleep after breakfast; when she woke up, she decided that the child was with her mother.
In the evening, the women gathered together, but couldn’t find Karina and they decided that she was with her father: the man had been living with another family for a long time and he was planning to come to Olom this day to take his daughter with him for a couple of days.
However, three days later, Karina’s father came to Olom alone. “I didn’t take my daughter,” he claimed, specifying that, on the day of the disappearance, he was sent on an urgent business trip for work.
Then, the people in the village noticed that the girl’s favorite puppy disappeared along with her.
The search operation began on the third day after the disappearance. The police immediately opened a criminal case under the article ‘murder’ About a hundred rescuers and volunteers embarked on the search for the child. The wilderness in a 30-kilometer radius was combed by cynologists and drones.
“With every day, our hopes dwindled, especially when we spotted a bear in the search zone,” one of the search operation participants shared.
Wild animals really were active, trying to run as far as possible from forest fires. Besides, the visibility in the taiga was low, due to the smoke and smog hanging in the air. They had little hope also, because, at night, temperatures usually dropped to minus one degree, even during summer. “It’s incredibly cold at night: I was waking up shaking and I was in my sleeping bag,” a rescuer said.
It was believed to be impossible to find the child alive under such conditions. Especially after they found the boots and the jacket of the girl, submerged in a swamp. That meant that Karina was wearing only her tights and a shirt, while even warmly dressed men felt chilly in their sleeping bags.
A breakthrough happened on the ninth day after the disappearance: suddenly, Karina’s puppy appeared back at the village, hungry, dirty and frightened. He refused to leave the yard and lead people to where he had come from. However, the search dogs picked up the scent, which helped. Despite catching a break, Karina was not found for another three whole days.
“She sat in a reed thicket, silent. I didn’t even notice her. She saw me herself and stretched out her arms to me. I picked her up; she was so small and light, like a feather. Her legs, arms and face were stung bloody. She was scared to death, barefoot. She immediately asked for water and said that she wanted to eat. And then she cried,” volunteer Artyom Borisov said, who found the girl.
She was found six kilometers from Olom on the 12th day. She got lost in the forest when she was playing with the puppy and kept going in deeper. The rescuers were at a loss: “She simply physically couldn’t have survived for almost two weeks under such extreme conditions.” In those 12 days, the child lost a third of her weight. All this time, she was eating berries, drinking water from a creek and warming herself at night by snuggling with the dog.
“I was shocked that this little girl knew how to prepare for the night: she picked a place, tore grass for her bed. She also survived majorly thanks to the dog. It’s important to have a living soul next to you in such a situation,” journalist Viktoria Gabysheva remembered, who wrote a book about it.
Karina spent more than 20 days in a hospital. She could eat only thoroughly ground food and couldn’t get out of bed: her stung and blistered legs wouldn’t let her.
This adventure changed her life a lot. An avalanche of attention came down onto the girl after this incident.
And, a year later, a memorial to her and the dog was erected at the Yakutsk airport; she also went to study at the Yakutsk Choreographic College. Today, Karina does ballet and dreams of performing in ‘Swan Lake’.
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