Biography for
Penelope Garcia (Character)
from "Criminal Minds" (2005)

FBI Analyst Penelope Garcia played by Kirsten Vangsness. Garcia was born in 1977 and is the analyst at the BAU Headquarters in Quantico, VA. She specializes in accessing secure data and researching potential suspects on behalf of the BAU agents while they are in the field. After an incident in which Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) couldn't remember her name, Garcia and Morgan talk to each other using pet names like "sweet cheeks", "baby girl" or "hot stuff". Garcia also has a tendency to answer her phone in crazy and outlandish ways. Garcia's parents died in a car accident due to a drunk driver when she was eighteen and now she helps counsel families who have a lost members to violence. She also has four siblings, all brothers. After her parents died she dropped out of school and went "underground" and continued to teach herself computer coding. She was put on a FBI watch list that consisted of only a handful of hackers in the world. She was later recruited by the FBI. In season three she was shot by Jason Clark Battle, a street cop who thought Garcia was onto him (he was shooting innocent people so he could save them). The man was later shot in the BAU by JJ (A.J Cook). Since then she started dating another analyst Kevin Lynch (Nicholas Brendon).