List of California Diaries Characters - Main Characters

Main Characters

Dawn Schafer

Dawn returned to California to live with her father, her stepmother Carol, and her younger brother Jeff during her eighth grade year. Upon moving to Palo City permanently, Dawn found herself facing several problems. Her friendships were changing, and she felt increasingly distant from Carol. She found Carol slightly immature, something which irritated her. When Dawn realized that Carol was pregnant, she felt even further distanced from her family. During Carol's pregnancy, Dawn felt as if she and Jeff were her father's "old family", and Carol and the baby were his "new family", and therefore more important. However, once Dawn's halfsister Elizabeth Grace ("Gracie") was born, they did manage to feel slightly more like a family. However, Dawn still gets irritated with Carol continuously.

Sunny Winslow

Sunshine "Sunny" Daydream Winslow has been Dawn's best friend since childhood. Her mother is suffering (and eventually dies) from lung cancer, and her father overworks to try and distract himself from it. She begins to dress in a way that Dawn calls too adult and starts skipping classes. After running away but changing her mind, she continues to be at odds with her father and sad and angry about her mother's eventual death. Her reactions to these situations also have her at odds with Dawn, who manage to fight on and off. Sunny is closer to Carol than Dawn is, which irritates Dawn. She is also close friends with Ducky.

Maggie Blume

Maggie is the daughter of Hollywood producer Hayden Blume, something which she resents. She doesn't like to feel as though her father's money or influence makes them better than anyone else. In The Baby-sitters Club series, Maggie went through a rebellious phase, but as her obsessive–compulsive disorder progressed, Maggie's perfectionist personality became more apparent. She's a straight A student who puts tremendous pressure on herself, and often feels as though she can never be good enough to please her parents, her father in particular. Her mother is an alcoholic who spent time in rehab as the series ended, and Maggie herself went through a period of anorexia, which she has gone into therapy for. She plays the keyboard, writes lyrics, and is the lead singer in the band Vanish. Maggie's career goal is to become a veterinarian.

Amalia Vargas

Amalia was new at Vista High School during eighth grade. Of Latina descent, Amalia lives with her mother, her father, and her older sister, Isabel. Amalia loves art and often illustrates her journals with caricatures of the people and events that she writes about. She is also the manager of the band Vanish, and dated their guitarist, James Kodaly, until James became verbally abusive towards her. After Amalia and James broke up, Amalia began dating Brendan Jones. Amalia went through a period of self-doubt when she encountered two girls who made fun of her because of her race, an experience which hurt her deeply, though her friends and family helped her through it. At the series' end, she was still dating Brendan, and had become good friends with Dawn, Sunny, and Maggie.

Ducky McCrae

Ducky is a sixteen-year-old boy whose real name is Christopher, though he has been nicknamed Ducky since childhood. He is going into his junior year at Vista. He is distant from his formerly close friends, Jason Adams and Alex Snyder. Jason has begun hanging around with the jocks at school, a group Ducky dislikes and has nicknamed "Cro-Mags," and Alex is severely depressed. Alex tried to commit suicide, and after the attempt he left California and went to Chicago. Now, Ducky's closest friend is Sunny. His parents are professors/international business consultants, and spend most of their time traveling. Ducky lives at home with only his older brother, Ted, an absent-minded college student.