Penelope Garcia studied at the California Institute of Technology, better known as Caltech, in Pasadena, Los Angeles. At the age of 18 she became an orphan because her parents lost their lives in a car accident that was caused by a drunk driver. After the death of her parents, Penelope left Caltech and disappeared. During this time she worked as a programmer and hacker.

Since her activities as a hacker did not go unnoticed, her name appeared on a special list of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), comprising only the brightest and most dangerous hackers. Since the FBI had a demand for young and talented programmers, she was contacted and later employed by the FBI.

In the course of her duties, she was later placed in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) of the series Criminal Minds, where she works with Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner and his team. Penelope Garcia (played by Kirsten Vangsness), the computer specialist of the team, is also responsible for the collection of information from suspects.

Her office, located in the headquarters of the BAU in Quantico, Virginia, is crammed with computer workstations, monitors and all other kinds of equipment that she might need for her work. The mostly extravagantly dressed and slightly chubby Penelope has a natural sense of humour, making her work as a profiler often seem a little easier because she tend to have a very grim task to tackle.

She firmly believes in her ability to find answers to impossible questions, which is also often proven. She works at a speed that never ceases to amaze the team. Penelope is a very emotional woman who has a great deal of sympathy for the victims and treats the pictures of crime scenes very personally.

This emotion often stands in the way of her work, because she frequently breaks down crying when seeing the crime scene photos that will be analysed for the team. Aaron Hotchner once emphasized that she decorated her office with colours and figures in order to remember that in addition to the terrible images on their computers, there are still things worth smiling about. In general, however, she is a very optimistic woman who can evoke these positive feelings in her colleagues too.

She is told by all members of the BAU team that her sense of humour makes them work on site a little easier. She has a close and special, brotherly, relationship to her colleague, Derek Morgan. However, she does usually get a little jealous when she realizes once again that he has given his love to another woman.

In her spare time, Penelope plays online role playing games. A perpetrator once succeeded to hack into Garcia's home computer, which is less secure than that of the FBI. Then he had accessed the closed network of the FBI through it.

When the team flew to the headquarters of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in Langley, north-west of Washington DC, Penelope Garcia was excluded from this visit at the express request of the CIA. Therefore it can be assumed that she was regarded as a programmer and hacker not only on the FBI list, but also on the CIA one. Her colleague, JJ, joked back then that this was certainly because she had tried to obtain the private phone number of Prince Harry from the CIA database.

In the third season, Penelope Garcia barely escapes death after a date. After the end of the date, a bullet just missed her heart. Since Penelope was now missing for an indefinite period, her work was taken over by Kevin Lynch. When Penelope shows up at the office after her convalescence, she is initially not thrilled that someone is using her computers.

Kevin, who was thrilled about her PCs, also shared this with her to melt the ice. A relationship between the two developed over timeand they are still romantically involved.

You may find all episodes of the series Criminal Minds here.