WORKING MOM REPRESENTS THE TYPICAL 2006 VALLEY GIRL.

Byline: TONY CASTRO Staff Writer

WINNETKA -- Lana Fawcett has drop-dead gorgeous Hollywood looks -- and a name to match -- but she is a Valley girl through and through.

``I was born in Woodland Hills. I love the Valley. I went to school in the Valley, and I've lived in the Valley all my life,'' Fawcett said Thursday. ``How many people can say that?''

Fawcett, who lives in Woodland Hills with her husband and three children, is a walking billboard for the San Fernando Valley -- a microcosm of the demographics of the typical Valley resident.

According to the Census Bureau's first-ever report on the Valley, the average resident is a 35-year-old white woman, a high school graduate, married with 1.68children. She pays a $2,000-a-month mortgage on a two-bedroom home valued at $500,000 to $999,000 that was bought in 2000 or later.

She has a half-hour commute to her job in a management, professional or related occupation, earning $50,000 to $74,999 a year. Her salary accounts for at least 35 percent of the household income.

A closer approximation than Fawcett to that average may be difficult to come by. She owns her own business, an automobile registration service, and her husband has his own masonry and fireplace company. She remarried three years ago, and she has a 15-year-old daughter and 17-month-old twins.

And though 40, she looks years younger.

Fawcett finds it funny that a lifelong tenure in the Valley could make her the poster child of the area she has always called home.

``I'm a typical Valley person,'' she says.

On a typical day, Fawcett is often driving the streets and freeways of the Valley, picking up automobile sales registration paperwork from car dealerships, taking it to Department of Motor Vehicles offices such as the one in Winnetka, then making sure the titles are properly transferred to new owners.

Fawcett has been doing this 14 years, ever since finishing Pierce College and securing a license from the state.

When she's not working, Fawcett is doing what, statistically, much of the Valley also does.

``I take care of the kids,'' she says just moments before taking her eldest daughter to the orthodontist.

And the twins?

``It's the hardest thing I've ever done,'' she says. ``It's tough. Now, we get some sleep. For the first year, I don't even remember. We had nighttime people come in so we could sleep. It's unbelievable.

``People say all the time, `Oh, twins, I would love to have them.' (But) you do not want to have twins. It's so tough. Now it's OK because they're older, and they have each other. But at the beginning, nah-uh.''

Her last name, especially with her looks, inevitably leads to the obvious.

Is she any relation to...

``No!'' she says, laughing, before the name is dropped. ``Everybody asks me that!''

tony.castro(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

(color) Lana Fawcett, who lives in Woodland Hills with her husband and three children, represents the makeup of the typical San Fernando Valley resident.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer