| Minor Character: Las Vegas | |
 | |
| Name | Holly Gribbs |
| Gender | Female |
| Family | Jane (Mother) |
| City | Las Vegas |
| Occupation | CSI |
| Status | Deceased |
| Portrayed By | Chandra West |
| First Appearance | Pilot |
Holly Gribbs was a rookie CSI on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She only appeared in the first two episodes before being killed off due to negative reactions from the test audiences.
Early Life
Not much is known about Holly's life or where she was born but it is known that her mother, Jane was a lieutenant in Traffic and had forced her daughter to take the CSI job possibly due to the fact that Jane herself would never get out of Traffic.
Holly graduated with honors with a degree in criminal justice. However, she never even wanted to be a CSI in the first place but did so to please her mother.
Season One
A rookie CSI fresh out of school, Jim Brass, who then was the night shift supervisor for CSI, openly revealed a strong displeasure for having Holly on the team, not wanting to have to deal with a brand new employee who had never been in the field.
He told Grissom to take Holly to an autopsy, stating that every CSI should have one on their first night. The smell got to her, however, and she fled the room, accidentally locking herself in a cadaver storage freezer. Grissom soon freed her.
Gribbs's next assignment was to investigate a robbery at a convenience store. The owner was annoyed, complaining that she was holding up business, and that "You guys never catch them, anyway." Her patience ran out, and she held Gribbs at gunpoint while stating that she'd defend her store to the hills if she had to.
Luckily, Catherine Willows who had overheard the call arrived in the nick of time and confiscated the store owner's gun before taking Gribbs out for lunch.
During the meal, Gribbs, disheartened from the events of the night so far and realizing things were going badly wrong for her told Catherine that she never wanted to be a CSI, and that she was living her mother's dream, not her own. Willows responded that she should at least see through one murder case before making the decision to quit and do something else.
Gribbs agreed, taking her advice.
Death
Gribbs's very short-lived time as a CSI came to a tragic end when at a crime scene by herself, she was confronted by Jerrod Cooper, the criminal returning to clean up the scene of the crime. She was then shot by Cooper who had used Holly's own gun against her, and sent to the hospital with Brass later saying that there was very little hope of her pulling through.
Unfortunately Holly later died on the operating table, leaving the team, especially Catherine devastated.
When Grissom called in Sara Sidle, an outsider to solve the case of Gribbs's death, Catherine objected, vowing to solve the case by herself as she had been the one to help Holly.
Despite the obvious tension between then, Sidle and Willows worked together for the duration of the case, soon finding Gribbs's final act to help the CSI's; she managed to scratch Cooper, getting his DNA under her nails which Catherine later found. This was the evidence needed to put Cooper behind bars.
As such, Sara later became a permanent member of the night-shift, replacing Gribbs.
And although short-lived, Gribbs's legacy continues to live on to this day.
After Death
She was mentioned in the season one episode, The Strip Strangler. She was also mentioned in the season three episode, A Little Murder and in the season eight episode, For Gedda. Her conversation with Catherine Willows in the pilot episode was referenced to in the season twelve episode, Willows in the Wind, when Catherine gives the same advice to Morgan Brody even though Holly wasn't directly mentioned by name.
