Melissa Stockwell was born in Grand Haven, Michigan, an aspiring gymnast who once dreamed of the Olympics. She joined the Army young, graduated from the University of Colorado in 2002, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Transportation Corps. In March 2004 she deployed to Baghdad with the 1st Cavalry Division — a proud platoon leader and convoy commander.
On April 13, 2004, ten minutes into a routine convoy on Route Irish, her vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. She lost her left leg above the knee, becoming the first American woman to lose a limb in active combat. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she realized how much she still had — her mind, her eyesight, her life — and promised herself she would live it for the service members who didn't make it home. She took her first steps on a prosthetic leg 52 days after losing her own.
As a lifelong athlete, Melissa wanted more than to simply recover. The Wounded Warrior Project got her skiing down the slopes of Breckenridge on one leg; the Achilles Freedom Team had her hand-cycling the New York City Marathon in 2005, a race she would later run on foot. When the Challenged Athletes Foundation invited her to a triathlon through its Operation Rebound program, she crossed the finish line feeling, for the first time since the blast, invincible.
In early 2005, a presentation on the Paralympic Games planted an idea: Beijing would host the Games in 2008, weeks after the Olympics, on the same venues. With a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star behind her, Melissa began training in earnest after leaving the Army. In April 2008 she became the first Iraq War veteran to qualify for the Paralympics, earning a spot on the U.S. Swim Team, and went on to race the 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle, and 100m butterfly in Beijing — where she was also chosen to carry the American flag at the closing ceremony.
After Beijing, Melissa moved into paratriathlon, becoming a three-time Paratriathlon World Champion in the TRI2 division, a two-time female Paratriathlete of the Year, and a two-time ESPY nominee. She has since completed a full Ironman triathlon — 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, and a 26.2-mile marathon — and has her sights on Rio 2016, where paratriathlon will debut as a Paralympic sport.
In 2007, Melissa completed the prosthetic practitioner program at Century College in Minnesota, and today works as a certified prosthetist at Scheck and Siress in Chicago, fitting other amputees with the kind of limb that gave her a second athletic life. She also co-founded and coaches Dare2tri, a Chicago-area paratriathlon club that has brought hundreds of athletes with amputations, spinal cord injuries, stroke, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, and visual impairment into the sport. She serves on the boards of the Wounded Warrior Project and the USA Triathlon Foundation, speaks for companies including Accenture, Hartford, and Deloitte, and appeared in the documentary From Baghdad to Beijing, chronicling four wounded veterans' path from Iraq to the Paralympic Games.
"I've done more with one leg than I ever imagined I would do with two," Melissa says. Learn more at www.dare2tri.org, www.melissastockwell.com, or www.challengedathletes.org.