Mendez was a male human colony ship captain in the early 23rd century. In 2225, he left Earth with a ship full of colonists bound for the Beta Aurigae colony. However, the ship went off course due to an engine imbalance, and crashed on a class M moon which was later dubbed "The Frontier". Mendez adopted a sixteen-year-old orphan named Simon Anders, who had lost both his parents in the crash. Mendez took him under his wing, teaching him so that, upon Mendez's death several years later, Anders could take on the role of the colony's leader. (TOS short story: "The Leader")