Commander Marisa Sandoval
Name Marisa T'Fala Sandoval
Position Executive Officer
Rank Commander
Character Information
| Gender | Female | |
| Species | Vulcan/Human | |
| Age | 47 | |
| Nickname |
Starfleet Indentification
| Starfleet Serial Number | AL-280-3160 | |
| Data Access Level | Level 5 | |
| Security Access | Level 10 | |
| Duty Shift | Beta Shift |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 5' 7" | |
| Weight | 145 lbs | |
| Hair Color | Black | |
| Eye Color | Hazel-Green | |
| Physical Description | While Marisa has the physiology of her Vulcan heritage, she still has some of her father's Hispanic looks. She has the thick, long hair of a Latina and prefers to wear it loose whenever possible. When necessary for work, she'll pull it back into a ponytail or braid. She prefers to dress casually when possible and often wears simple clothing with embroidered collars and cuffs. She is quite comfortable in jeans and coveralls when doing field work as a scientist. Because she is Vulcan and has a longer lifespan than humans, she looks to be in her early 30's. |
Family
| Spouse | ||
| Children | ||
| Father | Marco Sandoval | |
| Mother | T'Vala | |
| Brother(s) | Stann, Pedro, Carlos, Talor | |
| Sister(s) | ||
| Other Family | Various relatives on her father's side of the family. |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | In spite of being ½ Vulcan, Marisa is generally friendly and cheerful -- a fact to which her mother is resigned. Her mother frequently gave her mental tests and exercises to train her in the Vulcan ways. Because of this, Marisa loves puzzles and mental games. She is also very adept with her Vulcan mental abilities.. She has four brothers and a dozen male cousins. She spent a lot of her youth competing against them in physical activities. Her cousins didn't like the fact that she was better at shooting and climbing than they were. Because of this, she developed a strong competitive streak. She is a marksman and adept with a phaser, slingshot and handgun. She also has excellent aim with thrown weapons. |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | Marisa is highly intelligent and loves to learn. This comes in part because of her Vulcan heritage, and in part from her Mother's tutelage. She will often get caught up in reading, studying, or observing, which makes her seem to stay on the outside. She is fascinated with the history, culture, and people of the Federation, both ancient and modern. She enjoys a good intellectual conversation about these and a number of other subjects. At the same time, she doesn't appreciate more banal conversation and has little to no interest in talking about men, fashion, or ship gossip. She does not quite fit in with non-academics outside of work environments. Her physiology is Vulcan with the mental and physical attributes of the species. This enhances both her love of learning and her ability to spend long hours on a project if necessary. When she works, she often works in silence, preferring not to talk until she has enough information to discuss the nuances. She likes to use a variety of techniques to solve a problem. These can include researching ancient solutions to modern problems, talking out a problem with colleagues to come up with new ideas, or simply getting back to nature for a few days to let her head clear. She will occasionally bring these methods into her counseling as she finds they bring results. As a counselor, she will often urge her patients to write out their feelings in a journal, use physical activity like building something or painting to vent their emotion. She may also use music as catharsis or encourage patients to do random acts of kindness and service to get outside of themselves and thus get a better perspective of their own problems. She is optimistic and believes that gratitude and a positive outlook are directly related to health and well-being. Marisa loves puzzles and mental games. They not only make her think, but they make her look at things from different angles. This is especially helpful in her work as a scientist and counselor. Both occupations benefit from looking at life and people from a historic and cultural perspective and not simply the current trend. The more Marisa learns, the more she realizes how little she knows. This drives her desire to keep learning, and keeps her from thinking that she is smarter than others. She believes that you can learn something from everyone and so will often choose to listen rather than to talk. As a listener and observer, she is able to understand people better and perhaps understand how to help someone. She is a marksman with guns and phasers and adept with a number of thrown weapons such as knives, spears, slingshots and rocks. |
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| Ambitions | Marisa would like to settle down and establish a clinic where she can work with people who have problems adjusting to being from two different cultures. Ideally, this would be in the mountains where she can raise a family and spend time outdoors. Or she wants to teach and take students around the galaxy to work on archaeological sites. Or work for Federation Sciences and help administer and work on various sites. Her goals change depending on her current priorities. |
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| Hobbies & Interests | Marisa loves to read, especially books about history, folk and fairy tales and ancient cultures. She loves Shakespeare and classic Earth literature. She collects books (folklore and fairy tales from various cultures and books on history). She plays several musical instruments including the sampoña, guitar, Vulcan lyrette and flute. her favorite type of music is Andean folk music. She also enjoys ballroom and folk dancing. She enjoys the outdoors, especially the mountains. Mountain-climbing, camping, rappelling, hiking, and white-water rafting being chief among her preferred outdoor activities. Marisa likes to tinker with computers and archaic communications devices (a hobby she got from her father). She also loves astronomy and can navigate by the stars on her homeworlds of Vulcan and Earth. Sports include fútbol, target shooting, paintball, and knife-throwing. When she can't get to a holodeck to exercise, she uses a pole in her bedroom to exercise. |
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| LCARS Wherabout Record | Her "official" record shows that because of her experience with ancient civilizations and exploration, Marisa was invited to go on TAD to join a special expeditionary team to spend two years doing ground surveys of planets targeted by starships for possible colonization. Because these planets are far from other colonized worlds, communications are limited to periodic reports from the team leader. Families will be informed only if there is a death or when the ship arrives at the nearest starbase. There is also the possibility they will be extended for a third year, so Marisa is basically cut off from everyone but the other members of the team. |
| Personal History | Marisa was born on Vulcan and spent the first 13 years of her life there, receiving a Vulcan education and training. Her father was a Starfleet engineer and her mother was a Vulcan diplomat. When Marisa was 13, her father was given the opportunity to transfer to Earth and work at Starfleet HQ. Her mother was assigned as part of a Vulcan delegation to Starfleet Command so that she could be with him. Her family settled in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where her father was born and raised. From then on, Marisa and her siblings were raised as both Vulcan and Human. Her father believed that life was too short to not be cheerful and that this philosophy fit into the Vulcan IDIC. Because of this, Marisa and most of her siblings believe that being happy, cheerful and Vulcan is a good balance. They are at peace with both sides of their nature. Marisa’s mother had a difficult time with her husband's sometimes-boisterous family. To help "balance" her children, she taught them logic and how to use their mental abilities. She made them practice every day. Any time spent with the cousins was followed by deep meditation. In return, they were allowed to laugh, sing and dance -- as long as they did it in moderation. Marisa loves to read and to learn. She became fascinated with Pre-Columbian Central and South American history and culture. That interest spread to include other ancient cultures of Earth and Vulcan. When she finished school, she went to Peru to get her undergraduate degrees in computers, communication, history, archaeology and psychology. She found ways to tie her interests together to help her understand ancient cultures. She went to the University of Mexico City to get her Master's Degrees in history, archaeology, and anthropology. She spent some of her time talking to her friends and helping them with their studies and their problems. This led her to also get a degree in counseling. She took a job as a teacher at Cambridge while she got her PhDs in clinical psychology, history, and archaeology. When she graduated, she was offered a permanent job. But she still wanted to travel and learn. While she was spending the summer with her family, she was offered an opportunity to teach Earth history and study Vulcan history and counseling techniques in Shi'Kahr. It was a fascinating opportunity, and one Marissa quickly accepted. Her desire to travel and learn more led her to leave academics and join Starfleet. In spite of her academic work, she chose to attend Starfleet--although her studies were mostly about being a Starfleet officer and gaining a general aptitude in the other departments. She had no trouble graduating near the top of her class in history, archaeology, anthropology and counseling. She believes that a good understanding of history and culture is vital to understanding people -- you cannot take a person out of their environment and understand them. Her father is now retired and travels with her mother, who continues as a Vulcan diplomat. Two of her brothers are also in Starfleet. She finds Starfleet the perfect way to travel and learn while she helps those who need her other skills to cope with the rigors of life on a starship. She has been Chief Counselor and Chief Science Officer, going back and forth from time to time to keep her skills sharp, but her greatest love is science. =∆= Her time on the Tiuanaco was a learning experience. She'd spent all her professional career in academia and now she was a counselor on a starship. She expected the transition to be seamless, but it was anything but. Even though she'd prepared for each evaluation, read over the reports, she was unprepared for a majority of the crew doing whatever they could to avoid meeting with her. She took to hanging out on the shooting range or in the lounge where she'd strike up conversations to do an informal evaluation. For the more obstinate officers, she'd try to challenge them to a shooting contest or game of paintball. It worked well until word got around that she actually knew her way around a weapon. By then, most of the crew thawed to the idea of a counselor and would actually talk to her. After the first year her job got a lot easier and she made a few casual friends. As the Tiuanaco was a science vessel, she was allowed to help with archaeological research and cataloguing. And she had lots of time to do research and read. When she transferred to the Asgard the atmosphere was more open and accommodating. Both the Captain and First Officer worked with her to make the transition as easy as possible. She and the First Officer shared a love of history and had many lengthy discussions in the lounge. The XO was El-Aurian and spent most of her life on earth, so had some very interesting first-hand experiences. While on the Asgard she began dating the Chief Science Officer. However, after a few dates, he became mistrustful and distant. He seemed to feel threatened by her scientific achievements. Shortly after he transferred off the ship. For the rest of her stay on the ship, she kept to her work and the discussions with the XO. While the ship waited for a new head of science, Marisa was asked to step in and help out. Shortly after, she was offered a position on the Alabama as Assistant Chief Science Officer. It was a chance to spread her wings and to get back to science full time. On the Alabama she quickly rose to the position of Chief Science Officer because of her research and dedication to detail. While attending a official function on Qo'Nos, she had the dubious distinction of stopping a bar fight when the Chief Engineer had too much to drink and took offense at a series of choice insults by half a dozen Klingons who took exception to a Starfleet presence. While her choice to throw one of the Klingons across the room and then pin another's uniform to the wall with a steak knife brought a quick end to the fight, it also got her a night in the brig with the engineer. They became friends after that. She would accompany her friend to bars while on shore leave to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't end up in the brig again. She learned a few Klingon drinking songs while she was at it. She was asked to head science for the last voyage of the USS Schofield. She was part of the away team that beamed down to Pleione to learn how the civilization continued with the sun threatening to go nova. She and the away team discovered that an ancient race built the pyramid to control the solar activity so that the planet could survive. She continues to study the language and technology of the ancient pyramid and receives updates from the science team sent to observe. She was a little sad to receive a transfer to the Cartagena, but it was a chance to go back to counseling on a ship that was heading into deep space for a three-year research mission. She liked the challenge of working with a crew that would be stuck on a ship together for such a long time, and she was excited by the possibility of what they might find while they were out there. The ship was small, which had its own challenges and potential. However, it didn't last long. One year into the mission the ship was damaged by a spatial anomaly and had to head home for repairs. They only made it as far as the Poulson Nebula where they were attacked by pirates. Marisa was one of two teams sent out on shuttles to find a safe place for the ship in the nebula. Before they could do so, the ship was destroyed. The pirates chased the two shuttles. Marisa's shuttle ended up on Kreanus, a planet inside the nebula. The other shuttle's fate is unknown but they are presumed dead. Marisa, her friend Petra, and two others went to look for help while the engineer and pilot stayed with the shuttle. When the team returned. the two men were dead, pinned to the ransacked shuttle. After that, the four kept a low profile, doing what they could to stay alive. The four worked in teams, going out to do what they could to get food. Marisa helped those she could, but she quickly learned that on Kreanus, women were often the target of unwanted attention. Many were raped or worse. She did what she could to help while remaining unnoticed. She and Petra discovered a group of refugees from the USS Galileo and joined them. But before they could tell the other two and leave the planet, the two women returned to their hovel to find Pete and Tilly brutally murdered. Marisa and Petra packed what little they had and stayed in the Kreanus church until it was time to board a Klingon ship with the others. This led to her being assigned to the USS Galileo, where she first served as Chief Counselor, then Chief Science Officer. Now she is the Executive Officer aboard the DTI Herodotus. |
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| Service Record | Graduated near the top of her class from Starfleet Academy in counseling and social sciences (history, archaeology and anthropology). Served as a counselor aboard the USS Tiuanaco. Served as Chief Counselor aboard the USS Asgard. Served as Assistant Chief Science Officer and then Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Alabama. Served as Chief Counselor aboard the USS Cartagena. Worked with the survivors of the USS Galileo as counselor. Served as Chief Counselor and then Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Galileo-A. Serves as Executive Officer aboard the DTI Herodotus. |