CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Virginia Burdett isn't sure a judge, a mass murderer or another character will bear her name.

The Charleston woman is just excited that -- after being a fan for 40 years -- a character named "Virginia Burdette" will soon appear on the daily soap opera "One Life to Live."

Burdett said she and her husband were recently vacationing in Costa Rica, staying at the Four Seasons hotel there. They went on an excursion to a national park with four other people from the hotel.

Having lunch together at a hacienda, she said the group exchanged information about themselves, including what they did for a living.

Burdett volunteered that she was a housewife. Frank Valentini mentioned he was an executive producer of a television soap opera. Burdett asked which one.

Valentini, she learned, had been with "One Life to Life" for 24 years as a writer, stage manager and, for the past seven years, as executive producer.

"He asked me to write my name down. He said, "I think I'll name a judge after you," Burdett said.

She received an e-mail from him on Monday, saying he was working on introducing a character named Virginia Burdette into the plot of the ABC show. Although he was leaning toward naming a judge after her, he warned that the character may be a mass murderer instead.

"If it's a judge, I asked if he could say her law degree was from WVU," she said.

She and Valentini talked several times throughout their stay at the Costa Rica resort. One morning at breakfast, he supplied her with the answer to a New York Times crossword puzzle that had a clue about the soap opera.

While chatting at the pool, Valentini gave her the scoop on what her favorite characters' actors were like in reality. And she was able to fill him on story lines that extended back to her junior high school days, when she got hooked on "One Life to Live."

"I don't watch it every day. But if I'm in the house, I'll turn it on. You can miss three weeks and still catch up," she said.

Burdett would be the second person in her family to have a soap opera character named after them. A cousin had a friend who wrote for "All My Children."

"He was a doctor and fell down an elevator shaft five or more years ago," Burdett said about the character with her cousin's name.

According to Wikipedia, "One Life to Live" debuted in July 1968. "Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature racially and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social issues," the entry said.

Reach Rosalie Earle at ea...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5115.