He saved many lives, but not his own... Hockey player Ivan Tkachenko died 10 years ago

Ten years ago, on that day, Yelena Gracheva, an employee of the St. Petersburg fund AdVita, received an e-mail with the following content: “I would like to ask you to check whether the transfer was received to N.'s account. The transfer was sent yesterday. Thank you in advance". She replied that she would find out and write. And only in the evening I heard that the Yaroslavl hockey team Lokomotiv had died as a result of a plane crash near Yaroslavl. The plane did not even have time to gain altitude. The wing touched the aircraft beacon, crashed into the ground and burned down", - Tatyana May recalls in her blog.

Among the dead was the team's captain, Ivan Tkachenko, who sent the same mail. It was only after his death that everyone learned that for many years he had been transferring huge sums to the treatment of children with cancer. Nobody knew, not even the family. Several years ago, in her interview to Fontanka, Gracheva told about Tkachenko:

“...In particular, he made the last payment in the amount of 500,000 rubles to a girl suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia 15 minutes before boarding the plane and before his tragic death. At the same moment, he called and clarified about the receipt of money on the girl's account. He saved over 10 lives. The total amount of the transferred funds at the time of death was 9,996,300 rubles..."

Tkachenko was involved in charity work, not only anonymously donating large sums of money to children with cancer, he also donated money to orphanages, churches, and simply pensioners seen on television. Already posthumously, Ivan Tkachenko was awarded the Order of Merit to the Fatherland, IV degree...

It's worth reminding that on September 7, 2011, near Yaroslavl, immediately after takeoff, a Yak-42 plane crashed, which was leaving for Minsk with a hockey team on board. During the takeoff run, it rolled out of the runway and took off from the ground, but only for a few seconds: colliding at a height of 5-6 meters with the left wing with a radio beacon, it crashed into the ground, collapsed and burned up. Two people survived - flight engineer Alexander Sizov and hockey player Alexander Galimov, who died from his injuries for five days. 43 people died at the crash site. Later, the reason for it was called pressing by one of the pilots on the brake pedals during the takeoff of the aircraft...