Rosa Sandoval

Political Information

• Affiliation: Starfleet, United Earth Commonwealth

Family

• Mother: Camila Sandoval, Librarian
• Father: Alejandro Sandoval, Paramedic
• Brother: Mateo Sandoval, Fitness Instructor
• Former Husband: Bruno Perez, Historian
• Former Wife: Mallory Mclaughlin, Nun
• Former Wife: Lieutenant Commander Sofía Garcia (deceased), former Instructor of Starfleet Training Command

Biography

Early Life

Born to a proud Hispanic family with roots from Mexico as well as Argentina, Rosa was the eldest of two. Her parents settled in Winslow, southern Arizona, United States of America. Both her parents had a strong work ethic, something that they passed on to Rosa and her brother Mateo. They encouraged both of their children to work hard at school.

During her childhood, Rosa studied ballet – something she wished she had continued later on in life. After completing high school and college, she went onto university studying astrophysics as well as ethics, values and philosophy. She gained a masters in the former and just a bachelor in the latter. While at university she fell in love with a fellow student, Bruno. Their relationship was a whirlwind romance and after being together for six months they decided to get engage. Both her parents protested at this and the two ended up eloping and getting married in Las Vegas. After returning home to face the music with her family, her parents decided to accept the marriage and went on to throw a party to celebrate. It was during this party that she caught Bruno and one of her cousins in the middle of having intercourse. Rosa had felt foolish as she knew that Bruno was quite the charmer and had reputation at university for being a ‘player’. She eventually filed for divorce and quickly finished her studies. Wanting to place her experiences into something she joined the United Earth Space Probe Agency as a junior consultant at Mission Control in Houston Texas.While in Texas, she fell in love with another colleague and after moving in together they eventually decided to get married. Her engagement was much longer than her previous marriage and she went onto marry Mallory in front of friends and family in a full church service. The two of them were happily together for some time. Rosa had once built up the courage to ask Mallory to have a child with her, she was going to suggest they adopt but on the day she planned to ask Mallory she had to place her plans on hold. Coming home she found a letter on the side addressed to her from Mallory that included divorce papers. In her letter, Mallory explained that for some time she felt she needed to answer a higher calling and that she wanted to leave her old life to become a nun. As a result of her choice, she felt could no longer be married and gave Rosa everything they owned as an apology. Gutted and heartbroken again, Rosa went on to go through the divorce and decided to move back in with her parents after this. A colleague of hers suggested that she transferred to Starfleet. After several weeks of considering it, she did.

Starfleet Career

Early Career

Due to her extensive career, qualifications and experience, Rosa was fortunate enough to undergone only one year of intensive training on the fast-track course for Starfleet officers. She excelled further in astronavigation as well as subspace geometry, as a result many of her instructors felt that she would be good to take a career in either the fields of piloting or engineering. Deciding on the former, as it was something completely different to what she knew from before, she would go onto become one of the top pilots that left Starfleet Training Command through the fast-track course. While there, she became good friends with one of her fellow cadets, Alex Rodham. The two shared a strong passion for flying. At the end of 2145, she completed her training and would move onto her first and only starship assignment.

Amphitrite NP-02

Fortunately for Rosa, one of her instructors was on his way out of Starfleet Training Command at the end of the academic year to take command of one of the new NP-class ships. The Amphitrite, named after the Ancient Greek goddess of the sea, was launched in mid-2145 and required a crew to test many of its new systems. Believing that Rosa would be right for his ship, Captain Jozef Demko, offered her the position as his chief helm officer with the rank of lieutenant junior grade. She accepted and spent the next six years on the Amphitrite. In 2148, by the time she was a full lieutenant, Demko offered her the position of chief engineer and she accepted the role. She remained in this position for another three years.

Her years of experience on the Amphitrite caught the attention of some headhunters at Starfleet Training Command and when the ship was docked for a refit in 2150, Rosa was approached by them to come and teach at STC. Feeling that the opportunity to share what she had learnt was a great cause, she accepted the offer with Captain Demko’s blessing

Starfleet Training Command

With a promotion to Lieutenant Commander and giving a position of assistant professor, Rosa was given the opportunity to teach a number of classes at STC. She focused in helping prepare the next generation of pilots, but also dabbed in teaching ethics once a week too. The latter, she felt, kept her toes in reality and ensured that those cadets she saw out on the field teaching them to fly and comprehend the physics behind it all, also understood that being a Starfleet officer required them to see the whole picture and not just their duties.

While at STC, she was happy to teach alongside an old class mate of hers; Alex Rodham. The two picked up their friendship and she became good friends with his boyfriend, Michael Stanton too. Rosa eventually started to date again, one of her fellow faculty members an engineering professor who taught alongside Michael. Her name was Sofía Garcia. The two eventually fell deeply in love and moved in together after dating for six months. Not wanting to jump anything after experience so much heartbreak before, Rosa took her time in getting to know the new love in her life. After being together for three years, Sofía proposed and Rosa agreed – feeling that perhaps third time would be lucky. Sadly though a year later, Sofía became quite ill and before they could say their vowels they discovered she had cancer and it was terminal. As it was too late to carry out on treatment, the two women decided to get married in a ceremony among friends and family in their house in San Francisco. A week after their wedding Sofía passed away in her sleep, happy that she had married Rosa. Compared to her other marriages, Rosa didn’t see this one as a failure and continued to honour her wife by carrying on with her job at STC.

Challenger NX-03

When war with the Romulans had been declared, Rosa had considered offering her services to return to active duty but felt she owed her students the decency of teaching them until the end of academic year. When Starfleet Training Command decided to change the curriculum so that trainees would be pushed through at a higher pace, Rosa started to reconsider her decision to stay as a professor. Fortunately for her, Michael Stanton (who was now serving as first officer and chief engineer on Challenger NX-03) approached her in the October of 2155 to join him and his ship as its Officer of the Watch for the Gamma Shift. She had a proven track record of excelling while in a leadership position and Sofía had always told Rosa that she needed to get back out among the stars. Without a hesitation, Rosa agreed and joined the ship after it had returned from being heavily damaged from numerous combats with the Romulans and other hostile races.

Her first mission with Challenger involved helping the survivors from the starship Armstrong NCC-100 after it was lost in battle against the Romulans and later on trying to find the whereabouts of Discovery NX-04. The latter was the ship that Alex Rodham was assigned to as first officer and chief helm officer. Knowing that Michael was beside himself at the idea that Alex was gone, she supported her friend during this period of time until they soon found the ship hiding in the Barrens. Leading a team onto the ship to find and help the crew, Rosa was pleased to find that Alex was alive. The three friends had caught up over dinner before both Challenger and Discovery embarked on a joint mission to use a stolen Romulan drone ship to attack a key Romulan base. When Stanton had volunteered to join the team on the drone ship, Rosa was not expecting him not to return from the mission. So when the crew were informed that Stanton sacrificed his life to save the rest of the team, Rosa found the news distressing. That said, she ensured that Fleet Captain Burton, her new skipper, was well supported in helping the crew deal with their losses. On a personal note she helped Alex deal with the loss of his husband and was responsible in convincing him to leave Discovery and transfer to Challenger to replace Michael as its first officer.