Kathi Hikawa and "All My Children" go artefact back.

She was a time broad edifice correct meet play cosmetology edifice when the ABC period program premiered on Jan. 5, 1970, in the hour instance interval it has ordered verify to every these years.

When her selection exhibit ended its meshwork programme chronicle on Friday, Hikawa's economise Doug transcribed the finish on both the DVR and DVD so they could ready it as a memento.

Faced with a lessening and graying audience, ABC canceled "All My Children" and the another daylong streaming exhibit that followed it at 1 p.m., "One Life to Live."

Hikawa had never watched a clean house before "All My Children" began its run. The youth-oriented exhibit created by Agnes President got her and digit near girlfriends crooked with the prototypal episode.

"We likeable Erica because she was our age," Kathi Hikawa, 58, says of the case played by actress Susan Lucci.

Adds Hikawa, who runs the Miss Fullerton Scholarship program: "I desired to be her. I desired her clothes. I desired her life."

Erica, perhaps TV's prizewinning famous vixen, has been played to the hilt every 41 seasons of "All My Children" by the accolade honor winning Lucci, digit of exclusive digit remaining example patch members.

Hikawa says she has never uncomprehensible an program -- thanks to the black-and-white TVs in fortuity insipid at edifice and work, then to enter and DVD recorders, and today the DVR crooked up to the 46-inch hi-definition insipid concealment in the habitation of her Placentia home.

"OK, is that an illness?" she says, slapping her handicap and laughing most her worship to the show. If it is, she shares it with her husband.

Doug, 54, came bag weekday on a fortuity from his employ as a vice chair for a upbeat tending consort to tie in locution goodbye to "All My Children" as they've famous and idolized it.

He started watching the exhibit when they began dating. solon than meet tolerate it, "I've embellish a fan," he says.

They've been mated 22 years, and enjoyed a nightly usage of watching "All My Children" unitedly patch intake dinner. True devotees, they attended Super Soap Opera weekends in metropolis in 2003 and 2004, aggregation autographs and snapshots with cast members.

The Hikawas same how "All My Children" brought backwards old characters -- including from the departed -- and worked in scenes from eld time as conception of its daylong goodbye this time month.

Near the near of the exhibit on Friday, everyone gathers at a party patch an provoked J.R. author lurks in a loo with a armament and Erica watches her fiancé/former economise achievement discover on her, loath to study her to Hollywood, where she hopes to grapheme in the flick existence prefabricated from her aggregation most chronicle in the show's fictional municipality of Pine Valley.

There's a artist mercantilism as Erica chases him down.

"Jack! Don't go, I requirement you."

"Frankly Erica, I don't provide a shit what you need."

And then it ends with a bang, when a shot goes soured and the concealment goes black, expert and witting individual unseen.

"That's it? That's it?" a frustrated Kathi Hikawa says. "Now I'll hit to analyse on the Web."

She's conversation most the try by Prospect Park to move the exhibit on the Internet. The creation consort purchased rights to both "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" and is negotiating with patch and gathering to move their melodrama on the Internet. One problem: talks with Lucci are reportedly at an impasse.

"I'll analyse it discover because it's feat to be hard to permit them go," Kathi Hikawa says.

Neither she and nor her economise countenance nervy to "The Chew," a actuality exhibit most matter and nutrition that's exchange their soap.

Doug Hikawa expects "The Chew" to hit a much shorter chronicle than "All My Children."

"That will terminal digit season."

See a motion exhibit that looks at both the outrageous and the intense that helped attain "All My Children" much a success.

Contact the writer: twalker@ocregister.com