Eric Delko

Background

Mr. Eric Delko is the fingerprint, tire and drug identification expert of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab, as well as their underwater recovery expert. He was born in Havana, Cuba, on December 18, 1976. His original family name isDelektorsky; his adoptive father, Pavel, is a Russian national who had been assigned to Havana during the 1960s and married a Cuban woman named Carmen, with whom he had three daughters. When Eric's mother was pregnant with him, his father decided that he wanted a better life for his family, so he moved the clan to Miami. He also shortened the family name to Delko in an effort at Americanization. Eric later finds out (in season 7) that his biological father, Alexander Sharov, is head of the Russian Mob.

Delko typically acts as the team's frogman when the situation arises—his boss has even termed him his best diver. In the episode "Shattered", his job is endangered when he is busted for drug possession. It is later revealed that he had been buying the drugs for his sister Marisol, to ease the pain she suffered while undergoing treatments for leukemia.

It is disclosed that Delko adheres to the Roman Catholic faith. Additionally, he is proficient in Spanish.

On the episode "Dead Woman Walking", Eric has a nosebleed, which he thought may have been from exposure to iodine. Eric has been given a clean bill of health, and Calleigh tells him that he gets nosebleeds during high-pressure situations. His nosebleeds had not been addressed since.

It has been revealed in the episode "The DeLuca Motel" that Eric was born in Cuba before his mother and adoptive father arrived in the USA, after which they received fake birth documents for him. Delko pressed his mother for the truth after revealing that he knew his American birth certificate was a forgery, and that he had acquired his real birth certificate from Cuba. He told her he had become suspicious after realizing that several key facts in the story of their arrival in the USA, changed each time she told it. She also told him that his biological father was a terrible man, and that she wanted to shield Eric from him by hiding his identity with the forged papers. Delko's biological father, in fact, orders a hit on him.

The season 8 opener, "Out of Time", reveals in a flashback that Eric had, in the past, discovered a BMW that had been dumped in the Everglades with a body in the trunk and called Detective Caine. Eric was a tow truck driver at the time and knew the area quite well. He helped Caine recover the murder weapon, which Caine used to prevent an innocent man from going to jail. In this same episode, Eric meets Calleigh and hits on her by saying: "Are you going to give me your number now or later"? Calleigh responds that she doesn't date people she's even remotely involved with at work, and Eric replies, "Ok. We'll see". Caine, impressed by Eric's eye for minute details, convinces him to go to the police academy, get his badge, and work for the new CSI team later. Eric accepts the offer.

Relationships with colleagues

Eric has been involved with a number of women, including co-worker Natalia Boa Vista (who at one point thought she might be pregnant with their child). Despite Natalia's apparent duplicity (he told an FBI agent that she slept with him to get information regarding the lab), he remains protective of her when her ex-husband harasses her at crime scenes under the pretext of performing his duties as crime scene cleanup.

He also had a relationship with the wealthy, unstable Gloria, who broke both Natalia's car windows (because of Eric's former relationship with her), and also of Eric's sister Marisol (thinking she was Eric's wife). She stole Marisol's purse from the car, and later was suspected of being the sniper who shot Marisol, when Gloria is found to have been in hotel room below the source of the sniper's shot, and when a sniper rifle turns up in the trunk of her car. She ends up having been there with her own rifle to shoot Marisol, but couldn't do it, and then hearing the shots from the room above her. However, she did provide some important information that lead to the capture of the real suspects.

At one point, Delko "tooths" - text messages - someone for anonymous sex, though he later seeks counseling when his badge goes missing after one such encounter. Despite any appearance of womanizing on his part, Eric Delko is actually protective of women in general, standing up for them against abusive men.

He has a close relationship with colleague Calleigh Duquesne. They care greatly for each other; when he was shot in the head, she stayed by his side in the hospital. Early in season 7, it is shown that after the shooting, Eric started thinking about his future and admits to his therapist that he's been thinking about settling down and he'd like for it to be with Calleigh, revealing he has fallen in love with her. Later in Season 7, Eric finally admits to Calleigh that he "can't imagine living his life without her" as she lies unconscious in the hospital after suffering from smoke inhalation, and they kiss in the episode, "Sink or Swim", after Eric is released from ICE custody. Eric is seen waking up nude in Calleigh's bed in the episode, "Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing", and they share the bathroom as they get ready for work. As of Season 7, they appear to keep their romantic relationship under wraps, especially at work. In the season 8 episode, "In The Wind", Calleigh and Eric are seen kissing passionately in bed early in the morning. Further on in season eight, Calleigh is shown to have a key to Eric's apartment, and their relationship seems to be serious.

Delko was good friends with fellow CSI Tim Speedle, who was killed in a shootout when his firearm jammed because of poor maintenance. It had been Speedle who "welcomed" a rookie Delko to the lab with a friendly hazing. He is at first deeply resentful of Speedle's replacement, Ryan Wolfe, especially when some of Speedle's previous cases come under review. For some time, there is a measure of verbal sniping between the two. At one time, Delko fails to show at a crime scene to which Ryan is called on his day off, and Ryan is injured when a suspect shoots him in the eye with a nailgun; unsurprisingly, Ryan is upset with Eric, but in the end they manage to work out their differences. Eventually, Delko comes to accept Ryan's presence, and they become close friends. Since Season 4, the two regularly partner in solving cases and there were several instances where they bail each other out.

Delko was also friends with audio-visual lab technician, Dan Cooper, and they are seen in one episode watching a beach volleyball tournament together with a group of bikini-clad women. When Cooper unwittingly reveals their activities to Natalia, she becomes offended at Delko. He and Cooper's friendship ends when he and Calleigh discover that Cooper had stolen Speedle's credit card and used it.

Delko became Horatio Caine's brother-in-law when his sister Marisol married Horatio, but their family bond was tragically severed when Marisol succumbed to the gunshot wound she suffered at the hands of a Mala Noche sniper. They uncover the member who ordered the hit, Antontio Riaz, and pursued him all the way to Brazil. Riaz was killed with his own knife after refusing to surrender.

Delko is shown to be protective of his family and those he cares about, even if it brings him into conflict with his work and colleagues. Towards the end of season 7, he chose to help his biological father, who is a Russian mobster, despite Calleigh expressing her concern about his choice. When his sister Marisol, also Caine's wife, died as a result of a Mala Noche sniper attack, he follows Caine in tracking them all the way to Brazil to bring them to justice.

Delko is usually the one who plays practical jokes on CSI newbies. When Ryan first started out with the department, he and Calleigh ostensibly send Ryan to supposedly help Alexx with the autopsy only for a hapless Ryan to witness a headless cadaver for the first time, shocking him. He and Ryan play a prank on new coroner, Tara Price, by putting a robotic dummy under the sheets and making it sit up, thus frightening her.

Nightclub incident

During a night of clubbing with friend and colleague Tim Speedle, Delko is caught in a devastating nightclub fire set by the bouncer. Delko feels guilty that he couldn't save more victims, even though his efforts are heroic as he shepherds terrified clubgoers to an emergency exit. Despite the trauma of the incident, he insists on working the scene with the rest of his team.

Hostage situation/Death of Marisol

In season 4, Eric is taken hostage with others at a bank when a group of armed teenagers show up to rob it. When a 19-year-old gunman moves to rape a teenage girl, Delko opens fire, killing him. Two other bank robbers see him and start shooting with automatic Tec9's before fleeing.

In the episode where Marisol is murdered, Eric is also hit in the arm with a bullet that was meant for Marisol. Despite the fact that he had been shot in the arm, he insisted on going to the hospital with Marisol, but Horatio firmly told him not to.

Legal troubles

In the 13th episode of season five, Eric finds himself being sued for $250,000 in personal injury after intervening in a heated and physical argument between a man and his wife in a bar. Despite the fact that they are later determined to be scam artists (and the husband's subsequent murder), Eric settles with the wife rather than take it to court, so as to prevent more scrutiny of the lab, particularly in the case of Delko and Horatio's less-than-official trip to Brazil earlier in the season. At the end of the episode, Eric signs papers authorizing his wages to be garnished, and starts arrangements to work extra shifts to cover the garnishment.

Memory loss/Tim Speedle's death

In the final minutes of "No Man's Land", Eric is shot in the leg and then the head during a shootout with men hired by escaped murderer Clavo Cruz. In the second episode of the storyline, he is rushed to the hospital, where he flat-lines. After every other attempt at revival fails, an adrenaline injection to the heart brings him back. Following a tense surgery, he remains in critical condition in the hospital. It is revealed that most of the bullet is still lodged in his temporal lobe, and that he may suffer permanent damage to motor skills, speech and memory due to the hematoma. This is evident as he consistently asks to see his sister Marisol despite the fact she has been dead for months, and he also has no memory of being shot by Cruz's men. Coroner Alexx Woods explains to the rest of the team that while Eric is alive, he may not be the same Eric they knew. Indeed, Eric's return to work several weeks later is difficult (in "Broken Home"), and he is frustrated with the slow steps he must take, relearning basics and making rookie mistakes. He almost lets a killer escape when he makes a simple but crucial error on a blood-presence test, mistaking H₂O and H₂O₂ in order of application, which yields a false negative as a result. However, Eric later provides the insight to find the murder weapon, and thus a perpetrator. Eric experiences such difficulties as double vision, which interferes with his performance. When Ryan gently points out doubled evidence markers, Eric snaps at him in frustration, but Wolfe is not offended, as he remembers his own vision problems after being shot with a nail gun the previous season. Eric's memory lapses apparently cover only the six months or so prior to his injury, and as such he no longer recognizes the woman who sued him. This is used by a lawyer in an attempt to prove his incompetence.

Even after three full years after Tim Speedle's death, Delko, still feeling the effects of a head injury he had suffered earlier in the series, suffers from vivid hallucinations of his deceased friend.

Traumatization

Early in season six, Eric Delko has flashbacks about his near-death experiences and panic attacks due to his fear and anxiety.

Working with Calleigh

At the start of season seven, Delko's therapist is murdered and as he and Calleigh are going through the files, Calleigh read where Eric has quoted "After I got shot, it really put things in perspective. Made me think about my future, settling down. It'd be nice if it were Calleigh."

In mid-season seven ("Smoke Gets in Your CSIs"), Eric eventually tells Calleigh he couldn't imagine living his life without her. They finally share a kiss in Episode 16 of season 7 ("Sink or Swim"). As of season eight, they are in a serious romantic relationship.

Departure and return

In season eight, episode five ("Bad Seed"), Eric leaves the CSI team for many personal reasons. Horatio leaves a note on his windshield saying, "I'll always be here. H."

A few episodes later, Delko returns in the episode "Delko for the Defense" as a special guest star, to become an expert witness for defense against his former team. In the beginning of the episode, it was revealed that he was in Puerto Rico. He then tells Calleigh that he missed living in Miami and decided to come back. In the middle of the episode, Calleigh tells him that the district attorney is looking for a forensics expert and Delko tells her that he will think about whether or not he wants to work for him. In the end of the episode, Delko discusses things with the D.A. and decides to work for him.

In the beginning of the episode "In the Wind", he and Calleigh embrace in a passionate kiss in bed. This was later interrupted by a phone call from the D.A. to whom Eric says he hasn't spoken to for a week. He works with the CSI team on a fifteen-year-old double homicide case. Around the end of the episode, as Eric is getting ready to go to the gym, Calleigh talks with him about what they did that night together.

In the episode "L.A.", he and Horatio go to Los Angeles, California to help defend CSI Jesse Cardoza from a murder case that was actually committed by a porn producer.

In the episode "Backfire", after hearing the news that Calleigh was in the hospital, he rushes there along with Natalia and Ryan. While Calleigh was fighting for life, Eric was beside her and gets the evidence of the case from her.

In the episode "Time Bomb", Eric witnesses the murder of State Attorney Rebecca Nevins while arguing with Calleigh. Calleigh then sees Eric driving past after telling her he's busy. Calleigh follows him. Eric's honesty is later questioned when Calleigh, Walter, and Natalia confront him and ask him about his involvement with Nevins. Calleigh questions whether Eric was wearing a wire when they were "at home, together", implying they live together. Eric and Calleigh follow the GPS tracking device recovered from Rebecca's body, which Eric reactivates, to Ryan's home. A fed up Ryan loudly confronts Eric and mocks Eric's investigation of Walter hitting "a dead end" (from a previous episode). Eric finds stolen diamonds and Ryan gets escorted back to the police station, where he is questioned by Stetler, and shortly hauled off to jail. But Eric finds new evidence that places Stetler as a suspect, giving Ryan the pleasure of arresting Stetler, and thanking Eric for having his back.

In the season 8 finale, Eric announces to Horatio that he has been re-instated by the Miami-Dade Police Department, and received his detective shield to validate his return. He is once again a CSI. In the end of the episode, though he is concerned for all of his colleagues, it's Calleigh who is his priority as he enters the crime lab from the elevator and sees everyone down. The screen goes black after Eric goes down while calling for help from the hallway with Calleigh in his arms.

In the season 9 premiere, he is shown trying to carry Calleigh out of the crime lab, but he starts to pass out as he gets near the elevator. Seconds later, Horatio walks in the crime lab and Eric tells him to shoot the window for oxygen. After Horatio does so, everyone wakes up, except for Jesse, who died from head trauma falling down.

In "Manhunt", Eric and Horatio chase down Memmo Fierro, the hitman who shot Marisol and then blocked the ambulance. In a hostage situation, Eric has a clear shot at Memmo, but does not wish to shoot him in front of his young daughter and lets him go.

Episodic appearances

This section contains episodes wherein Adam Rodriguez is credited as part of the recurring cast, as his character Eric Delko.