User Profile

History: Felicia Malika Salbatora was born on the 17th of August 1973 in Havana, Cuba, as the youngest of three children, all born in wedlock. She has a mother Esmerelda, 60, a father Hernandez, 65 and two older brothers, Sebastian, 36 and Cortez, 34. From the very start Felicia grew up in a slightly different than normal family. By the time she was born her mother, an art teacher was already profoundly deaf, but despite this she taught Felicia many things, ASL, how to lip read in Spanish, how to draw, how not to judge people just by appearance or actions that along with many other lessons which make the CSI a passionate, gentle woman. By teaching her ASL and lip-reading her mother was preparing her for what could happen to her as she grew older, deafness running in a gene Esmerelda Salbatora carried along with a knowledge it could also be passed on to any one of her children. Growing up with two older brothers and growing up in a city with an increasing crime rate Felicia gained a tough, less feminie side and learnt how to street fight fairly well. This tomboyish side of her also sparked a love of bugs and science and any spare time the young girl found was spent drawing and labelling the various insects and spiders she could find and experimenting with a small chemistry set.

It was fine when she was a child, Felicia ran with the wolves and learnt their ways but hitting puberty came some things that would change the way some viewed her. She grew breasts, and became thin upon losing the puppy fat that was so commonly associated with a younger girl, both these bodily developments envied by some other girls, who vied for the attention that was suddenly directed on Felicia by a good amount of the male teenage population. Even more jealous though because she didn’t desire the handsome ones or the jocks and didn’t make an effort by wearing make up or being rebellious to get their attention, finding it by natural selection. Felicia just liked the boys who were real people and who didn’t judge the young woman by appearance but by mind. This type of male was rarely found and even then a few boyfriends came and past without much happening, just a kiss, a present.

At that point in time, before she turned fifteen, dates were just small things at home normally or in the park with a chaperone somewhere near by. It was a big deal though when Felicia turned fifteen because for only girls in Cuba that particular birthday had a name of a special celebration, “Celebracion de los quince” which in English meant “the celebration of the 15.” It was a big deal for her because it was the day when became more independent and her parents let her do things like wear make-up, go out at night or go out on dates without a chaperone. As was the custom Felicia spent the morning having photographs taken, in a dress that had been handed down through the generations of her family, female to female. Also she wore dramatic black eyeliner around her eyes and lipstick on her mouth, something that was new to her and also along with the photographs her father was videotaping her having them taken and there were family and family friends there to watch as well as that. The photographs were done by a professional photographer, which was something many Cuban families did and he instructed her how to pose, knowing from previous talks with her parents on what dress she would be wearing and discussed what place would be best. Talking to the photographer was important because he was making sure special photos worked out very well. The pictures themselves were taken in an old, beautiful part of the city called Plaza de San Francisco de Asis which was also a place where many other girls had their photograph taken and many tourists come because people would constantly stop and look at the process. Those photographs when they were collected were put on display by her family and into beautiful albums that she was to keep for life. All of the celebration from the dress to the photographer to the people invited to the big party in the afternoon of the day was planned months ahead of the actual time by the Felicia herself and mother. After the photos she went home with her family to make the final preparations for the big party called a “Fiesta” that she was having that night with all her friends, family and classmates. The Fiesta had been in planning for a long time, especially as she was the only girl in the family of five. Before the party she had gone to a special dinner with her family just to celebrate her coming of age. At the Fiesta there was many people, lots of food and great music played by a hired traditional band. Music and dancing were two important things in Felicia’s Cuban culture and two of the young girl’s favourite things and naturally everyone did the salsa, waltz and a dance they called “casino.” During the Fiesta her parents made a signal to her and 15 couples including Felicia and a dance partner took to the floor. Then the 14 other couples left just the girl and her partner to dance in front of everybody. A lot of girls normally danced with their boyfriends for that special dance but not having one at the time Felicia danced with an aspiring Priest by the name of Felix Varela Pureza, one of the best male friends she had at that time. She had grown up with him, attending mass together, being alter boys together. There was mutual respect between them, Felix knew Felicia was pretty and that she had brains, he was more interested in the latter quality. Not to become a boyfriend just because he could talk to her and she would understand, because of this they talked often. The dance with Pureza as she often called him, because Pureza meant purity in Spanish and the boy, although just 15 was an aspiring priest, had practised many times so they danced very well in front of everybody and that did happen because both people were very good dancers. The Fiesta had traditional Cuban food like pork roasted over a charcoal fire, rice, beans, salad and “I yucca con mojo” which was a cassava (a vegetable) in a rich garlic sauce. Later in the evening there was a big cake that was cut, Felicia’s cake was very fancy as were the cakes for special celebrations. Her cake was big and had lots of pink and blue icing and when the girl eventually got a piece after it was cut it was for her at least very delicious. Along with the cake there was rum, beer and juice to drink and everybody had a good time. The woman to the current day has never forgotten a moment of it, even wondering what it would feel like the day after when she was finally 15 and how she enjoyed every moment of it.

Leaving a reputable high school with above average marks, more than needed to get into a good University the now adult woman took the first chance she could grasp and applied to a well known, high standard University in Havana. Upon getting into the desired University Felicia choose to take up the subjects of Chemistry, Forensics and Biotechnology while majoring in Biology. The childhood passion for the living and the dead of the natural world, that had started so early in her younger days continued on during this time and was used to her advantage because she already knew the ropes and a bit extra of some of the subjects she was taking. By this time, the issues with other people around her concerning her appearance and the male attention it brought with it had settled down and she made a few friends when she got in to the hang of things. The friends were nothing terribly important though; nothing close knit in particular, just a few acquaintance status people she could converse with and sometimes hold a study group with. At the same time that Felicia started University she made the crucial decision to purposely take advantage of her looks and to pay for her University fees she took up a job as a strip club dancer at a downtown club in Havana. It paid good money and before long the woman knew the ropes of University life, had a firm hold of the ones that needed to be used in her dancing and two years had passed steadily with much success in them. Dancing, although possibly shameful in some people’s eyes payed for her University fees and she succeeded well in her learning.

It came to a point one day after two years that things were fairly settled and the woman had gone from a 19 year old freshman into a well knowing nearly 21 year old student. That was until a new, breathtaking male dancer came into employment at the club that Felicia worked at, he was chiselled like a piece of well carved marble with a stunning personality to match thus a definite A+ hunk. He was everything a woman could ask for in a man, and because of that, every woman in the club took notice of the newcomer. One night, sometime early in that year, absolutely some day in February, shortly after the man had come he and Felicia were on duty together so they took a break together. Things were as always hyped that night, passions ran high and after a long period of dancing the two took a break and just outside the club where they took it, nothing was any different. Nine months later Felicia had a baby son named Xavier, who had a father who was no where to be seen, which was probably a leading matter of f when she had told the man about the baby early on in the pregnancy and watched as he consequentially quit his job and took of to go elsewhere.

The recently turned 21 year old woman took quite easily to motherhood so with a close knit family around her, she continued with her studies while her mother minded the baby and when she got home at the end of the day she would spend all the time possible she had with her son in between her studying. Although combined pregnancy and baby hadn’t interrupted her studies on a major scale, there were those few friends and not so close family that looked down on the woman for having a child out of wedlock. But, Felicia, who loved her son for all the world, just took it all in her stride and got on with life, having learnt an important lesson that would serve her well when the next year approached and she went back to work at the club after three months leave.

Felicia was 24 at the end of her sixth year of University when she graduated, succeeding, despite her busy lifestyle, with great passing marks that anybody would have been pleased to get. She was especially pleased with her results as she had proven herself under the few eyes that had doubted her and earnt a Ph.D. in Biology, all by her self. She had been a stripper and a University student since she was 19 and a mother since she was 21, all in all she led a pretty busy life, but it was organised and settled down in the brief down time after the graduation ceremony and party with family and friends. Not for long though because the next year the single mother was almost snatched up by Havana’s Crime Lab, which trained and refined her already present CSI skills and set immediately to work as a rookie Nightshift CSI. For a while, Felicia switched over her dancing shifts to a small Dayshift but that lasted for only a year precisely before she left the club for good and turned full attention back onto excelling at science in her work and being a good mother to a five year old son.

All the while, while taking care of her son in the small house she had bought near her parents, something lingered in the back of Felicia’s mind, something she had paid close attention to while growing up. She was a good mother and her son loved her and she loved him, every sound he made was sweet and on the job, every sound was important, each piece of evidence, each suspect was important. The niggling thing was, she had been brought up with the knowledge that one day out of the blue she could fall rapidly deaf because of the gene that her mother possessed and could have passed on to her. Felicia’s mother had explained it to her when she had been dancing along to rock music as a ten year old, that she had a chance of going deaf, so the young girl, now a grown woman knew what she might be up against one day.

All her questions were answered in 1999 when she started to have problems with her hearing, especially high pitches, a matter which got worse during the duration of her second year as a CSI. By the end of the year her condition had progressed rapidly to the point where she had nearly lost higher pitches altogether with the exception of a few particularly loud and piercing sounds and Felicia had to keep grasping and accepting the idea that she was going to lose all sound forever sometime in the near future. Because of that thought, she did something she had tried and succeeded in doing when she had first noticed her problems, she kept enjoying sounds, listening to what she could hear of young Xavier, listening to music, conversing with friends, imprinting all those things in her mind so she wouldn’t forget them. There were a few mishaps as she started to adjust, nearly getting run over by cars and the like but practise made perfect and knowledge made experience. In the new millennium that the year 2000 brought with it the fateful issue with her hearing took a nose dive and started getting much worse in that second year of the whole affair in which she was going to turn 27. Felicia was already well on her journey to becoming profoundly deaf as she progressively continued to lose her hearing more swiftly coming gradual stages.

The first and last of the two major stages came upon her as the ties between 1999 and 2000 finally broke apart, some low pitches that had become dampened at the end of the previous year started to become even more so. Rapidly as that fast yet slow passing year went on the dullness became worse and still yet as her world fell to deathly silence around her the budding CSI battled on in her own unique way. She battled with a lot of things, hearing in her work, hearing her son, hearing other people and hearing the world around her, she was prepared, yet she wasn’t. People became like dubbed, poor sound quality videos in some foreign language and music she had listened two barely nine months ago to a year, even then turned up slightly louder than she had used to have it became just like a dull buzz. Most importantly a critical amount of people both at work and at home began to notice a lot more about how she was and act on their suspicions. They spotted the slur in the speech and the way she wouldn’t notice a telephone ringing or respond to a person calling her over when her back was turned. A few months before the end of the year, things had gotten worse as they had been doing previously and sounds had settled to many slight trace noises as it had seemed for even those few seemed many. Those noises had gradually dwindled down to a few, then even less then none at all and eventually, at the end of the year it had happened, Felicia Salbatora, a hard working woman, mother and citizen of Havana had gone profoundly deaf. She had lost her music, one of the most precious things she held close to her along with her little son, but, the world was still spinning and she still pushed along with it. There were family and family was always a thing a person like her could rely on. And those few friends who were like family, namely Father Felix Varela Pureza, the young, budding religious, teenage boy turned Priest, they were all there. The Priest, her mother, her father, her brothers, they could all talk to her in sign language.

It was like a somewhat awakening when she had to rely on the visual world around her because immediately when 2001 came, Felicia, who was going into her fourth year as a CSI suddenly began to notice exactly how much attention her Nightshift Supervisor was giving her and the precarious situation it caused in the work place. She had progressed over the years, quickly, from a rookie to a level one, to a level two CSI with Homicide duties on the side as some sort of random fringe benefit. This just because the Supervisor liked her appearance as it seemed he did with all, at least most of the female staff that worked under his watch. Some of the women, such as Felicia had done the work to receive such quickly earned positions as she did so that was the only thing that they looked towards in their jobs, the Supervisor was an awful man, if he went down he did have enough power to bring them all with him. If it meant risking their jobs if they told, it was almost a unanimous position to put up with the abuse from the corrupt man.

Felicia saw her 28th birthday come and go that year, as she did with her 29th, those two particular years and the coming next were critical ones in learning how a deaf person was treated by some people. The Nightshift Supervisor ladled his and her work on her, in hope that she would not finish it and he could get rid of her. She had now become a small threat to him, if he kept upgrading her status because of all the work she did, then one day the woman had the chance of replacing him. Felicia, however was an ably minded worker, she had been taken up because of her qualifications and had only improved since then. The work was completed and at risk of being reported the Nightshift Supervisor had to give her the credit and the proper title for what she had done by promoting her to second in charge of the lab they worked at. It went above just being a CSI level three with a matching clearance level because Felicia found herself suddenly with a clearance level of five and a level of four. The important thing was, she covered the work as it came and had kept covering it for those years, that, with so many cases solved by her nimble mind in quick successions she was a veritable first rate success at the lab. She had one of the highest positions possible and had earned it, which was the most important thing because she had triumphed and become just as important as the man who took advantage of her slow, slurred speech and turned the tables against him. He hadn’t thought she could do it, the Supervisor, although he scared the woman and he knew it, had just thought all she was good for was breasts and brain. Brain being important because it got his work done while he pleasured himself with other things, it was just all about the woman and the money for the man.

When 2004 came however, the start of the year brought something good for a change to the woman, a chance to take leave of the Cuban lab and go to America to be employed by the Las Vegas lab as a Homicide investigator. It worked for Felicia, the place she worked in was a veritable hell hole and the man she worked under was an ass so the same day as the job came up available and was presented to her in form of a latter she went in to work and started packing her things. At the end of the shift that Night after putting all the items she owned from her office and locker and packing them into her car the CSI took her files from the Supervisor’s office and told him she quit. That was it and soon after she left and drove off. It wasn’t as simple as that, the next day, jobless for the current moment she filled out the proper forms and said a few sparse farewells before leaving altogether. It was a small hop and a skip after that to get to Las Vegas basically. After what she had been through, it was nothing compared to what she had been going through. Another year later, as 2005 started, Felicia found herself in Las Vegas. The previous year had been a haze of packing, organizing, pens and papers as she packed all her worldly possessions along with her son’s, got them shipped, bought bus and plane tickets in the order of, plane to Miami, Bus to Vegas and transportation for her car and other items. In short she had written, prepared, packed up, sold her house, bought another with the money she had in Vegas, said all her long, lengthy and sad goodbyes all of which took about ten months. Then she had travelled to Miami in late October of 2004, stayed there two months sorting further before hopping on the bus to Las Vegas with her son, both people somewhat still scared of the country. Felicia because some men still looked at her through the same eyes and also because no one she had met so far had been able to speak in ASL, which was a disadvantage because she knew not completely good English lip reading.

Though, the short stay in Miami hadn’t been all that bad, she had been able to briefly meet up with Lieutenant Horatio Caine and read the Spanish he spoke amongst all of Miami’s other Cuban immigrants. Those people had treated her well, like a woman with a brain, yet, still for the time being, even with the progress onto Las Vegas, the City of Sin and the meeting of her and Grissom and the realisation he spoke all three of her languages to her knowledge, Felicia and her son Xavier still felt somewhat afraid, yet gradually relaxed as their adventure in America takes a kick start. Las Vegas was busy like Havana, but busier, yet at the same time providing some comfort and most importantly a good home that they had been so long looking for, together, and also provided, just like Miami had in the likes of Horatio Caine, many admirable, smart, well mannered and knowing people. Thus Felicia settled into her work and Xavier into his schooling, the pair which so dearly loves the other person, sticking together and smoothing out the creases, repairing the flukes and making alterations, all for the better. Family had been left behind surely, but they were still there, in heart, in mind, in spirit and most importantly in faith.


Personality: Felicia has a unique and rather curious personality because for a lot of the time she happens to be one who keeps quietly to herself. Not something caused by her deafness but rather brought out by it is her understanding attitude to people who are out of the stereotypical norm because they are disabled or deformed. She views them like she any other person, as people and thus doesn’t treat them any differently to anybody else. That quality helps her in her job because she doesn’t put anybody in priority order above anybody else just because of the way they look or act; instead people are sorted by the determining factors of the pertaining case. It’s a surprising wonder that with this exuberant and friendly attitude that the woman takes to her work and life in general that she didn’t have many out of family friends in Havana or anywhere at all for that matter. Most times, for her at least it boiled down to jealousy or not fitting in, when girls played with dolls, she went exploring with the boys, when other teenage girls were experimenting with makeup, she was, in all her beauty, experimenting with chemicals. Some people in her childhood were jealous of her looks or of her intelligence so she never fitted in terribly well with the two optional school social types, she was to pretty for the nerds and to smart for the beauties.

The woman keeps mainly to her self because of what she has learnt from her life, that, although she tries to treat all people equally or with the best intentions they can be treated with other people do not share this view towards her. Unlike her mother, who gets on fairly well with her deafness affecting the way people treat her, which is not very differently at all, Felicia got the other end of the stick when she went deaf. People who had talked to her at work stopped, and treated her like a slow idiot and her supervisor further more made it crystal clear that her deafness at the age of 27 when she should be in her early prime, was not a good thing, more like something to be ashamed of. Although the woman should have been wiser at that age she was affected by the harsh treatment she received from her co-workers and it left many imprints and marks on show she handles herself. She is quiet because she has become afraid of what people think of her and has a slightly queer thought that there is a chance that people are going to treat her different at her new place of employment if they know about what she is. She keeps to herself to avoid letting people know and does not tend to share her personality or view when at rest at work for fear of people finding out. Gradually, she is learning that the chance of people treating her differently because she is deaf is very low but still it is going to take a while, for her at least, to find out that she shouldn’t fear people or be ashamed of herself.

Felicia is the kind of woman though that almost any kind of person could like, with the exception of those few types of people who are jealous of her or just plain don’t like her. She’s kind and has a very soft nature when dealing with people in work or out and when she’s in a serious matter she does the part well because of her ability to put her mind to a task and do it. With her practise at an overload of work she’s a nimble and quickly able worker so sometimes she seems to or actually has an edge on some more tired people because she can work ably in most degrees and areas of many situations. She always tries to be out there for her fellow man, or woman and is pretty self reliant on herself unless sound is playing a major part in the situation, in which case she has a soft weak spot because she tries as hard as she can in those types of occurrence before she seeks help. But in the end she has the ability to sort things out for the better.


Physical Description: Felicia Salbatora is as pulchritudinous, in short, is as attractive as her name sounds. Her personality matches this ravishing appearance and by far this does not mean she is perfect looking, moreover the fact that she has self confidence in her appearance and likes the way she looks. The woman herself as a whole is a rather characteristic and hard to forget person once somebody gets to know her because everything she does, every movement or facial expression has so much thought and emotion put into it. Being a full blooded born and bred Cuban Felicia has a lovely chocolaty brown complexion, not a light brown or a dark brown just a lovely smooth and rich brown that centres itself just on the darker side of the two extremes of dark and light. Her eyes which sit under slightly hooded eyelids with lightly feathered brown eyelashes and eyebrows, have experienced lines and bags under them and are another shade of brown altogether; from far off they look just like any other chocolaty, brown eyed girl brown. Closer up though, they are more complex and moreover an impossible shade of dark, almost reddish brown mixed in with an over layer of other different browns. Felicia’s lips are another curious thing which gave the woman so much appearance success in her former profession as an exotic dancer; they are a full, soft rose colour which works well for her because she does not make a habit of wearing any blaringly obvious make up like some people similar to her might tend to do. Her speech, as a result of her profoundly deaf state, suffers under a slight speech impediment because she can not match what other people say to the speed or type of speech in which she speaks and thus makes her sound slightly tipsy or drunk. One more thing about her appearance which relates strongly to her deafness is her ears, which she hides constantly under her hair because of the shameful way in which she has learnt to respect and treat her inability to hear. Felicia’s hair, which is a dark brown like many of her features, does that job well as it is a dark, dark, very slight red, raven brown which is a long, past shoulder length. Because it hangs freely for a lot of the time, in lengthy curls the hair covers the two offending appendages perfectly when it is loose but if not it can be seen otherwise in a tight, bouncy bun when she puts it up.

Her profound and permanent deafness is nonsyndromic deafness, autosomal dominant. Nonsyndromic deafness is hearing loss that is not associated with other signs and symptoms. This breed of deafness is often genetic and can be described by its pattern of inheritance. An autosomal dominant inheritance pattern means that one copy of the altered gene is sufficient for a person to be affected. Most forms of autosomal dominant deafness are progressive, which means they become more severe over time. This type of hearing loss is most likely to develop after a person learns to speak (postlingual). The hearing loss is usually sensorineural, or caused by changes in the inner ear, and may affect one or both ears. In Felicia’s case, she was one of the 20-25% of people with nonsyndromic deafness who inherited in an autosomal dominant pattern. She inherited the mutated gene off one single parent, her mother and following classic nonsyndromic, autosomal dominant deafness patterns she went progressively deaf after she had learnt to speak, losing her hearing in fact when she was well in to adulthood.

Moving down her body it is fairly easy to describe Felicia because she has a lovely body which, unlike her ears has nothing wrong with it. Nicely rounded, c-cup breasts hang down slightly, lower down is a well toned, thin chest and stomach, earned back after pregnancy by her dancing and regular exercise. Each part of her body is thin and nicely shaped and very able and nimble moving, especially her hands which posses delicately manicured nails and perfect length fingers and are able to almost literally fly over paper work and other easy as tasks while retaining their slowness for activities such as evidence collecting and processing. Lower down even more are nice, long, also thin legs and feet which walk in a straight line and not duck like, with each toe being shorter than the big toe. It’s obvious why some people could have been jealous of her because her perfect height, thin weight and stunning looks but still, despite the fact that she has previously used them to her advantage while being employed as a stripper she does not flaunt any of it any more. The woman dresses responsibly in nice, not to revealing clothing which functions well for either situation of being at home or in work and does not tend to wear much obvious make up, in general she doesn’t draw any attention to herself, particularly her body below her face and neck. Her face which sits well balanced, on an ideal length neck which in turn is placed on nice, not to broad shoulders, is still her most used part of her body, it conveys more about her than lower half does about the person she really is. Someone who is unique, special, hard-working and who has suffered because of what she is but chooses wisely to fight mentally instead of physically. Finally, she is a person who is strong, who likes to sing and dance, who loves her music, who loves her country, has a beautiful son, an interest in science and entomology and owns a Brazilian Black Tarantula. There is a lot more to Felicia than just her appearance and it provides her with the missing characteristics that her face doesn’t. It also allows her to quote many a variety of sources, use her knowledge in all areas such as applying it directly to work or using it in family life and be both eccentric and smart. Amongst these she can also be wise and experienced while keeping a check and maintaining a balance on and including that, all other aspects and areas of her life. She is definitely, on the outside at least, not someone who should be scared and afraid of world like she at the current moment. Things like being scared and afraid can be changed, altered, by her and by others, so only time will tell as to what happens to her and her situation, even with it’s mixed up and lengthy medical history. Good or bad the Homicide Detective slash CSI battles on willingly and uses her success to the betterment of things and refuses to give up even when the going gets tougher and tougher because she has faith and knows that it is possible to live and succeed at the same time.

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