"Rachel, I have to say... Your means of dealing with people boggles the imagination!" - Monica Baldwin
Monica Baldwin is a resident of Ashford Falls, New York and a graduate of Ashford Falls High School. A former entertainer, she now works as a choreographer at Madame Lily's Ballet School on Commerce Street over Paragon Jewelers.
Born in Amityville, New York in 1960, Monica was the daughter of Richard and Prudence Kendall. Her father was a successful contractor, and her mother was a former professional dancer who taught dance in their home on Bennett Place. However, her father passed away while still young, and his funeral expenses took almost the entirety of the family savings. Monica calls this period of her life "tumultuous and exhaustive." Her mother was only able to afford a small cottage in Troy and a job as as a teaching assistant at Ashford Falls High School in order to support them.
Prudence eventually began seeing and dating Gregory Baldwin, a firefighter at the Ashford Falls Fire Department, a divorced single father to Quentin Baldwin. Monica was frequently antagonized by Quentin who began calling her "Nikki," a name she hated but which invariably stuck. After her mother and Gregory got married, she was adopted by him and began hyphenating her name out of rebellion to remember her father. Her relationship with Quentin remained estranged for years, even after the birth of her half-sister, Selena Baldwin. She did continue her dancing lessons at Madame Lily's Ballet School, where she became friends with Rachel Hedison and Jessica Witherspoon.
During her teenage years, Nikki was part of the "in-crowd" at Ashford Falls High School and rivals with both Samantha Strickland and Caitlin Featherstone. She enjoyed her visits with Rachel to the Hedison Mansion and craved becoming wealthy herself, but her more selfish desires were waylaid by her need for attention. She continued to excel in dance and while in high school, she took dance classes at the Pruneda Dance Hall in Albany and the Angels School For Professional Dance under Lily Edgecombe. She was also smitten by classmate Ross Draper who dropped out of the police academy to become a musician. When Draper formed his first band, Nikki joined him as his lead singer and traveled to California to break into business, joined by Samantha's sister, Melissa Strickland. Besides dance, she had a part-time job at the Pierce Veterinary Clinic feeding and cleaning after the pets there and horse-back riding at Ashford Falls Riding Stables.
On the West Coast, Draper struggled to make a name for himself, but Nikki had a short-lived career as an actress and dancer in music videos for other musicians. Basically supporting Draper in his stagnating career, she barely returned home to her mother for several years; her mother even once hiring Dash Andrews to track her down. Her visit home in the Fall of 1989 turned up in the alternate reality of Carter Hedison's coma with Nikki facing Rachel's dream counterpart. Realizing "this" Rachel was supposedly an impostor, she was pushed out the top floor window of the Hathaway Mansion to her death.
In reality, Nikki stayed on the West Coast for a few more years, moving home after hearing news that Rachel had been killed in a car accident in an incident involving Danny Featherstone. Feeling nostalgic, she reopened Madame Lily's Ballet School with her own money and help from Janet DuBois. She was especially surprised when Rachel turned up alive in 1995, more opportunistic and unscrupulous than she remembered. Although she had initially supported Carl Griggs in the local mayoral election, she changed her attitude and started supporting Sabrina Collins after hearing Rachel plot to rig the election. This act forced Rachel to sever whatever friendship they once had, but Nikki found more faithful friendship with Janet and Bobbi Pierce.