Štefica Krstić was born in 1946 in Sarvaš, a suburb of Osijek. Her parents came to Slavonia after the Second World War, in the period of settlement. Before the War, Sarvaš was inhabited by Germans. They were forced to leave following the War, with people from Lika, Kordun and Zagorje being settled in their place. During Yugoslavia, Štefica Krstić was active in athletics and was a member of the Yugoslav Athletics Team from 1962 until 1970. Before the war in the 1990s, she lived in Sarvaš with her husband and two sons. In August 1991 she took refuge in Osijek. Her husband and two sons, aged 19 and 21, stayed in Sarvaš. Shortly afterwards, her younger son was captured and killed by Serb paramilitary forces. His body was exhumed in 1997 in a park in Ernestinovo. It took another three years for Štefica Krstić and her family to be sure that those remains were indeed those of her son, since the DNA analysis was only carried out in 2000. For a number of years she led an association which actively encouraged the process of searching for persons that had gone missing in the war, and subsequent exhumations. During those activities, she met and cooperated with associations and individuals from Serbia who were also engaged with the search for the missing. Today she lives in Osijek and heads the Victims of the Homeland War association which gathers data concerning those killed and missing, and records the stories of the suffering of the towns and villages of Slavonia.