Elena Lacková was born in Veľký Šariš, the first of five children of the Roma fiddler Mikuláš Doktor and a Polish mother.

[4] In 1939 she wrote her first play called The Transplanted Flower, which, however, was not allowed to be performed.She married Jozef Lacko, with whom she had six children, one died during World War II.

In 1948 she wrote the play Horiaci cigánsky tábor (A Burning Gypsy Camp), which she rehearsed with people from the settlement where she lived at the time.

After the press of the time reported on it, the actors and actresses were invited by the Ministry of Social Affairs in Prague to perform the play in the border areas of the Czech lands, to which many Roma had been resettled from Slovakia.

In 1964, while working at the Faculty of Education and Journalism at Charles University in Prague, she graduated as the officially first professing Romni in Slovakia in 1970 at the age of 49 and became a co-founder of the Cultural Association of Gypsy Roma in Prešov[2][5][6] After graduation, she worked for two years as a teacher and social worker in Ústí nad Labem, then as a social curator in eastern Slovakia.