Eric Delko's father, Pavel Delektorsky, was a Russian engineer sent to Cuba in the early 1970s. There he met and married a young Cuban woman, Clorinda, with whom he had three daughters, when he discovered his next child was a boy. Wanting more for his future son, Delektorsky took a chance and smuggled his family across the Straits of Florida.

Once they arrived, Delektorsky embraced everything that was America - changing the family name to Delko and giving his son an American name, Eric. Over time, he built a small engineering company into a large firm, with the expectation that Eric would take his place next to him. While Pavel built the American dream, Clorinda devoted herself to working with charities in Miami's Cuban community. She involved her children so they would always know where they came from. Here, Eric learned there was another side to the American dream - and that the only way to survive was to help one another.

Throughout his schooling, Eric's father pushed him toward science, which he enjoyed and excelled at, but in high school he discovered his true love - swimming. Devoting himself to the sport, he let everything else fade. He graduated with a swimming scholarship to the University of Miami.

Eric took a science degree to appease his father, who still clung onto the dream that his only son would follow in his footsteps, but Eric dreamed of gold medals. By his senior year, Delko realized there weren't going to be any medals in his future. Disappointed, he gave up his dream of Olympic glory. He also realized that a life of building codes was not for him, so he told his father he would not be joining him at the firm. To this day, his father has not quite forgiven him.

With the seed planted by the community work he did with his mother, Delko realized that helping others was the way to make a difference. So he entered the MDPD police academy and offered his skills as a swimmer to the MDPD underwater recovery department. He became one of the elite officers on the team but this infuriated his father who believed this life was beneath his son. But his father wasn't the only one who thought there was something better for Eric. Having met Horatio Caine during a bomb scare, Delko's natural instincts and scientific curiosity impressed Horatio. When Horatio took over the crime lab, Eric was his first recruit. Delko had been wrong in college, a medal was his future - the badge of the Miami-Dade Crime Scene.