Eddie Velez
		Swapping Hats Eddie Velez (Garcia) leaves PORT CHARLES for DAYS OF OUR LIVES

	Having assumed the role of longtime PORT CHARLES police detective Alex Garcia from George Alvarez (now Ray, GUIDING LIGHT) in December 1999, Eddie Velez looked forward to making it his own. Alas, while Garcia continued to make arrests, viewers still never got to know the man behind the badge. Now, Velez has stepped away from the PC gumshoe to take on a short-term contract role with a bit more fire: DAYS OF OUR LIVES’ Paul Mendez. "I play Brandon and Nicole’s father who’s just returned from prison," he explains. "I’m back to avenge things because I feel Abe, the cop who put me away, did so just so he could have an affair with my wife!"     Velez gets a kick out of the fact that he’s built a career playing characters on both sides of the law. "I grew up playing cops and robbers on the streets of New York," he reveals, grinning. "Now I’m getting paid to do it!" On The Hunt The actor began his stint on DAYS on June 20 during a Catalina Island location shoot, just after completing work on his latest film, Paramount Pictures’ The Hunted, with Oscar winners Benicio Del Toro (with whom he co-starred in Traffic and the NBC miniseries DRUG WARS) and Tommy Lee Jones.     "I play a hunter who encounters Benicio’s psychotic character, a former military Delta Force killer who was never untrained and now is living in the woods and causing trouble," Velez reveals. "We’re really Delta Force guys also, and we’re there to capture him, but he confronts us because he knows that. It’s a lot of action!" Bye-Bye, PC? With so much on his plate, is this the end for him as PC’s Detective Garcia? "Pretty much," Velez admits, chagrined. "From what I understand, they don’t particularly like you to be appearing on another show in a completely different type of character. So maybe someday I’ll turn up in Port Charles when I’m done with this."     Indeed, if the character is not recast before Velez becomes available again, the actor could return to the set where he’s made so many friends. "I’ll miss a lot of the actors: Jon Lindstrom (Kevin), Kin Shriner (Scotty), Julie Pinson (Eve), Kiko Ellsworth (Jamal) and Erin Hershey (Alison) are all wonderful to work with," he offers, noting that he was supposed to work more on PC when the film came up. "So I was disappointed about [leaving] PC. I had a lot of fun over there." — Kelli M. Larson