(KTXL) — What makes a woman remarkable? For each of those we love, it could be 1,000 little things.

Back in December, FOX40 started asking everyone in the Sacramento Valley to tell us about the remarkable women in their lives.

Out of the huge response, FOX40 has picked four finalists who are eligible to win prizes and a national award sponsored by our parent company, Nexstar Media Group.

This is the story of Remarkable Women nominee Judith Lladoc.

Balancing a husband, a house, kids, grandkids and days in the chemistry lab would be more than enough to fill out the plate of most people. But Judith Lladoc is not most people.

For Lladoc, the formula to a lifetime of work in chemistry was simple: desire plus the inspirational touch of just the right person at just the right time.

“The reason why I took this course is because of my high school, my chemistry teacher, too. So, we did not do a lot of labs, you know. During our time, we didn’t have that. We just have that alcohol lamp instead of the Bunsen burner,” Lladoc said.  

“But the way she explains, you know, it’s amazing for me. So, when my mom took me to enroll me to the university, she said, ‘What course do you want?’ Then I said, ‘Chemistry.’ It was chemistry,” she recalled.

As distinct and definitive as the draw was to her life’s work, it wasn’t quite the same with what Lladoc said is her life’s calling.

“It started, my sister and her husband were already Couples for Christ members. So when we go to their house, they were having this prayer meeting, and then my sister would always tell me, ‘Why don’t you join Couples for Christ?’ And then, ‘Oh, it’s not for us,’” Lladoc explained.

That was in Las Piñas, a part of Metro Manila in her native Philippines.

Lladoc and her husband, Vic, had already married there after falling for each other at the University of Perpetual Help.

Then, by 1991, something changed. Not only were she and Vic actually participating in the home-based prayer meetings at the core of Couples for Christ, but they were also leading them.

“I guess it’s based on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in me,” Lladoc explained. “Maybe I was already touched by the Holy Spirit. The Lord gave me that grace to be a true child of his.”

Since feeling that shift, Lladoc and her husband have ministered to more than one thousand people in Southeast Asia and America after moving their family to Elk Grove in 2002.

That’s when Lladoc was recruited to teach chemistry at Luther Burbank High School.

Some might see a couple like them and think they could never achieve a life like theirs.

“It’s not easy, we’re messed up. … We have a lot of failings, too,” the couple said.

The circumstances they’ve run into trying to lead others to a deeper relationship with God haven’t been so easy either. Despite that, Lladoc said she has never doubted that the power of the message she’s delivering for God could change things.

She told FOX40 helping others and seeing them leave their old ways behind is “pretty exciting to see.”

It’s a commitment to facilitate faith and change in others that her husband so admires.

“I guess that is the kind of life that I myself would want to journey with until my last breath,” he said.