Anita moved to Pine Valley in 1995 with her family to be near her older sisters, Julia and Maria. Anita enrolled in Pine Valley High School where both Bobby Warner and Scott Chandler vied for her affections. Anita chose Bobby, the rebel without a clue, much to her parents chagrin. Anita began seeing Bobby on the sly. Anita met a pregnant run away, Kelsey Jefferson, and befriended her. Anita arranged for her childless sister Maria to adopt Kelsey's unborn baby. Anita was shocked when she learned that Bobby was the father of Kelsey's baby. After Kelsey took the baby back from Maria, Anita couldn't face anyone and ran away. She didn't get far, and stayed with her friend Scott Chandler. Eventually Anita made peace with her family and returned home.

Bobby, in the meantime, married Kelsey in order to arrange for little Sam to be returned to Maria. Once this was accomplished, his marriage to Kelsey was annulled and he was allowed to court Anita openly. Anita and Bobby announced their engagement on New Year's Eve at the grand opening of Holidays.

Shortly after their high school graduation, Bobby and Anita left Pine Valley and headed to Chicago. The two were later married.

Anita returned to Pine Valley in the winter of 2004 to help Maria and Edmund, following Edmund's shooting and subsequent paralysis. Anita brushed off advice from her mother, Isabella, to return to Chicago and be with her husband. When Bobby tracked his wife down in March 2004, it was then revealed why Anita had left her husband: Bobby had had an affair with a co-worker and the affair devastated their marriage. Bobby tried desperately to repair his marriage, but he kept causing himself more trouble by lying to his wife about business ventures and his role in trying to seduce Greenlee Smythe Lavery into bed. Eventually, a furious Bobby gave his wife what he thought she wanted: a divorce.

By early 2005, Anita turned her attention to the man that had been there to offer her a shoulder during her troubled times with Bobby, Aidan Devane. The pair spent New Year's together skinny-dipping in a pond and sharing a smooch. Aidan and Anita never really got off the ground, and she eventually left Pine Valley to move to California permanently with Maria.