Well, it was at this special event where we met the longest tenured CCSD employee, a speech pathologist who's been with the district for, listen to this, 50 years.

(Cynthia Valencia-Kimball) I was 12 years old.

My whole family sat and watched The Miracle Worker with Patty Duke.

Annie Sullivan was her therapist.

And I thought, I love what Annie Sullivan did, and I can do that.

-For Cynthia Valencia-Kimball, that childhood dream came true in August of 1973.

-I wasn't really nervous, because I could hardly wait to meet these elementary school children.

I had four schools.

And I just remember, my dream is coming true and I can hardly wait to do this and I hope I get complicated, challenging cases, because I know I can do it.

-In the 51 years she's been a speech pathologist with CCSD, Ms. Valencia-Kimball has been an essential member of the department, making history along the way.

-I spoke Spanish and English.

I speak Spanish and English, and I-- so I was their first bilingual diagnostician, and I loved it.

At Helen J. Stewart School, I was one of the innovators of using sign language.

-She's even produced educational videos with a little help from KLVX Channel 10, now Vegas PBS.

-Do you hear what I hear?

-This is the program I produced, and you are about to see the tympanoscope.

This is the nurse at Helen J. Stewart.

We found the tympanoscope.

It tests the child's hearing in 10 seconds.

And we get valid results, and we can get it on both sides in 20 seconds.

And it's-- We needed that.

It was a definite necessity in the school district.

-When Ms. Valencia-Kimball started with CCSD, there were only 23 speech pathologists.

Today, there are nearly 400.

-We work with special kids, and special kids have great personalities.

And we work with kids who have fluency issues, which would be stuttering.

We work with kids who have articulation errors, usually R and L or S with a lisp, which would be a frontal lisp.

You have to get your tongue in the middle and curl it back to say "Rrrr."

Students, when you have a speech problem, when you have any kind of a delay, get into Special Education.

Parents get your kids in Special Education because we have the skills and the tools to get your kid to communicate.

-There is no doubt Ms. Valencia-Kimball is passionate about what she does and has made a difference in the lives of thousands of students.

As for her retirement plans... -I'm not ready to retire.

I love my job.

I've loved it since I started, and I have learned more every year.

-Ms. Valencia-Kimball, by the way, comes from a family of educators.

Not only was her mom a professor at USC, but two of her children are also teachers with the Clark County School District.

Ms. Kimball is an 8th grade teacher at Cannon Middle School, and Mr. Kimball teaches at Cimarron High School.

Love that they are all part of our CCSD family.