On March 19, 1997, viewers of the CBS soap had their hearts stolen en masse by a 6-year-old newcomer whose future was as bright as her eyes.

This is going to be difficult, we know, but try, won’t you? Try to wrap your head around the fact that it has been more than a quarter of a century since The Young and the Restless welcomed to its cast a freckle-faced newcomer by the name of Camryn Grimes. “I don’t think anyone could have predicted when I was a kid that I’d still be here, years later, playing a completely different character,” she tells Soaps.com. “Maybe soap fans could have, but I know I didn’t!”

It wasn’t just Grimes’ innate adorableness that drew fans to the moppet who’d been cast as Sharon Newman’s long-lost daughter, Cassie, either; the 6-year-old was freakin’ good. Just over three years later, the rising star, 10 by then, became the youngest-ever winner of the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress. “I’ve had other jobs, but obviously, none of them were as impactful as this,” she says. “Pretty much every lesson I ever learned in life came from being on Young & Restless.”

The audience assumed that they’d watch her grow up on screen the same way they had, say, Melody Thomas Scott as Nikki or Heather Tom as Victoria. The audience was dead wrong. In 2005, Grimes was killed off as Cassie. We were as gutted as Sharon and the little girl’s stepfather, Nick. Heck, as gutted as Grimes. “It was a sad, sad day. I’m like, ‘I just want to go home!’”

But that wasn’t the end of the actress’ stay in Genoa City. How could it be, right?

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In the years that followed, Grimes appeared now and again as Cassie’s spirit. Then, in 2014, she was reintroduced to the canvas as Cassie lookalike Mariah Copeland… who turned out to be the twin of the deceased. Now, of course, both Grimes and her new character are as integral to The Young and the Restless as plot twists and sharp turns.