"I have these moments where I'm like 'wow, what will this feel like,'" Wendy Tokuda said on the eve of the final television broadcast of her decades-long career in California.

"I started anchoring in the 70s. There were only four (stations). That was it. Look at what you can do now. We were shooting on film when I started."

Friday night won't mark the first time Tokuda has stepped out of the Bay Area spotlight. The veteran journalist established herself as the female face of KPIX for more than a decade before leaving for a coveted job in Los Angeles, the second largest market in the United States, in the early 1990s.

Television was king and local anchors were as visible as anyone in the region.

The Seattle native would later return to our living rooms as an anchor for both the local NBC and CBS affiliates, but ultimately gave up the anchor chair in 2010. Now, after six years working primarily as a feature reporter, Tokuda is retiring from local television for good.

Tokuda still remembers the day the newsroom put the old typewriters up on the shelves to make room for computers. They had to pull them back down at least once when computer networks failed. In that age before internet, television was king and local anchors were as visible as anyone in the region.

"Television had the ability at that time of making the Bay Area more of a community," Tokuda recalls. "I just happened to be there at this magical time. It was extraordinary and it isn't going to happen again."

Dan Rosenheim helped convince Tokuda to sign on at KRON after her detour in Los Angeles and he later convinced her to retake her seat at the KPIX anchor desk. He says Tokuda was a big part of that conjuring that special connection between the anchor desk and the audience.

"She anchors the news with intelligence and polish and warmth. It's kind of a magical combination, and it helps explain why she has been so popular with the audience," says Rosenheim, now vice president and news director at KPIX. "She is very knowledgeable, very well read."

But Tokuda recalls an era when her reputation wasn't so well established. During that first week as a permanent KPIX anchor she remembers returning to a ringing phone at her desk and a man demanding to know who "that woman" was in the anchor chair. After listening and politely informing the man that SHE was that woman, the viewer agreed to give her a chance.

"I was such a pit bull with it. Reporting was something I really wanted to do," recalled Tokuda, who says she really only sees the challenges of being a woman and a minority in hindsight.

But there was one topic that got her more hate mail than any other.

"Nobody even knew about the internment. It was not in the history books or anything and our parents never talked about it," said Tokuda, whose parents met at a camp for Japanese-Americans from Seattle.

Tokuda said she related stories of what happened in the Bay Area and chronicled the movement to make sure that internment couldn't happen again.

"That's when I felt it. I couldn't help but think that my parents were affected by that," she said.

From the anchor desk, Tokuda and longtime anchor partner Dave McElhatton brought us the signature local stories of a generation.

"I'll tell you what, I worked with (McElhatton) for 14 plus years. He was the sweetest, most supportive partner - I used to call him my "cell mate" - that I could ever have asked for."

Tokuda was a steadying voice following the Loma Prieta earthquake and a gifted storyteller during the scramble to rescue Humphrey the whale. She turned the latter into one of three reality-inspired children's books.

That passion for connecting with children slowly surpassed her desire to command the anchor desk, and she said her most recent endeavor, a regular feature known as Students Rising Above, is her most important work.

The segment highlights a nonprofit that helps at-risk students who excel in the classroom despite harrowing personal challenges.

"Thanks to Wendy's initiative, it raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to send kids to college each year," said Rosenheim. "They have an annual banquet, and it's stunning when they introduce someone, who maybe lost both parents and single-handedly raised two siblings and had a job on weekends all while getting A's in high school, and now they've gone to college and graduate school and are about to join a big law firm!"

Tokuda says that franchise will be turned over to a trusted journalist, Sherry Hu, allowing her to step away for good.

She plans now to spend more time with her husband and the five daughters they share while continuing to pursue her continuing passions of storytelling, environmental restoration and finding ways to help at-risk children.

"I've got these periods where I can hardly wait. But then I have these flashes where I know I need to take a leap," she says.

That leap comes Friday evening after her final segment on KPIX at 6 p.m.

Bill Disbrow is a content manager for SFGATE. Follow him on Twitter here, because he needs somebody to.