Empath was created by Chris Claremont and Sal Buscema and first appeared in New Mutants #16-17 (June–July 1984) as a member of Emma Frost's original Hellions.

[volume & issue needed] De la Rocha is one of the few Hellions, along with James Proudstar, Amara Aquilla, and Angelica Jones to survive an attack by time-travelling villain Trevor Fitzroy (although Empath's former teammate, Tarot is eventually resurrected).

[volume & issue needed] He takes the opportunity to attack them mentally, changing a subtle attraction to full-blown obsessive sexual desire between the two.

[3] During his tenure with the Hellions, de la Rocha meets and falls in love with Amara Aquilla, the New Mutant known as Magma.

When the colony of Nova Roma is discovered to be a ruse by the witch Selene, Empath uses his abilities for a time to convince Magma that this is a hoax.

[volume & issue needed] Later, Empath joins X-Corporation and becomes the Communications Director for its Los Angeles chapter along with his former love Magma.

[6] It is later revealed that Empath was meant to be a Trojan Horse, whose rejuvenated powers disabled many of the X-Men, while the Red Queen and her Sisterhood took a locket of Jean Grey's hair.

[7] Empath is moved to the X-Men's new Utopia prison, made out of Asteroid M, alongside Sebastian Shaw and Donald Pierce.

[8] Empath is later seen on Krakoa where he uses his powers to wreak havoc by manipulating his fellow Hellions into fighting each other, and also anyone who comes in his way, and as a result, he is assessed by the island's scientists and psychics.

The first to Amenth through Otherworld to prevent Arakko from competing in Saturnyne's challenge,[12] and the second against The Right where on his deathbed he reveals "Cameron Hodge" is actually just a robot duplicate.

[13] The team eventually fights the Locus Vile, an Arakki group who wants to retrieve the DNA that was stolen from them by a clone of Sinister during their mission to Amenth.

He can affect large groups of individuals at a time and can exert varying levels of empathic control over them, ranging from subtle manipulations that others are generally unaware of, to a complete negation of emotion that reduces them to a zombie-like state in which he can command them with little effort.