On the "World's Biggest Stage": The heroic story of Melissa Stockwell ('98)

Melissa Stockwell always wanted to be an Olympian. 

Gymnastics was her first love, and she excelled in the sport from an early age. When she was 16 years old, watching the 1996 Atlanta Olympics on TV filled her head with dreams of one day competing on the same stage.

Known as Melissa Hoffman at the time, her family moved to Eden Prairie for her father’s career in 1994. She spent her high school years at Eden Prairie High School (EPHS), graduating in the Class of 1998.

Linda Wallenberg, a 47-year EPHS English teacher and gymnastics coach who taught Stockwell in her Advanced English class, said in a recommendation letter she wrote in 1998 that Stockwell gave “so much of herself to the gymnastics, diving, and track teams of Eden Prairie High School.”

Until she couldn’t anymore: Despite being named All-Conference, All-State, and All-American during her time on the gymnastics team, a senior season marred by injury concluded with heartbreak. She missed the cut for state by one one-hundredth of a point. It marked the end of her gymnastics career, her Olympic aspirations dashed.

“I got to the elite level, but never the elite-of-the-elite level. I thought I was going to be one of those gymnasts,” Stockwell lamented. “That dream had been there for a long time, but it didn’t happen.”

It started her pursuit of a new dream — a new way to represent her country.

Proud Patriot

The story of Melissa Stockwell cannot be told without an account of April 13, 2004 — it’s the day that, as she once described in a TED Talk, her “real story begins.”

Only two years after graduating from ROTC at the University of Colorado Boulder, commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army’s Transportation Corps, Stockwell deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her platoon embarked on daily convoy missions, tasked with the safe transport of soldiers and equipment. 

“That day started out just like any other day,” Stockwell recalled. “I put my uniform on, Kevlar bulletproof vest, grabbed my weapon, and got into my Humvee as I had done dozens of times before. On this specific day, we were going right into central Baghdad. We went under this bridge — there was a roadside bomb under it. I remember this very loud noise, black smoke, the smell of metal, windshield crashed in, vehicle swerving, and we ended up crashing into this woman’s house. To make a pretty long story short, that roadside bomb took my left leg.”

“I was 24 years old,” she added. “That day, my life forever changed.”

A soldier in her convoy trained in first aid applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding long enough for Stockwell to make it to an American hospital in Baghdad for emergency surgery. When she was transferred stateside, an intense 52 days of additional surgeries and rehab put into perspective how fortunate she had been.

“I looked around and saw these other soldiers much worse off than I was,” she explained. “Then I looked at myself and was like, wow, I’m the lucky one because all I lost is one leg. So that put things into perspective very quickly.”

Stockwell was the first American woman to lose a limb in the Iraq War. She was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for her bravery in combat and medically retired from the Army in 2005. 

Her rehabilitation period was transformational —
not only for learning how to live with one leg, but also for inspiring a new path for her life. She fell in love with swimming, for both its therapeutic and empowering effects. After moving back to Minnesota in 2005 and joining the Twin Cities Swim Team, she set a goal that would bring her Olympic dream
full-circle: to compete at the Paralympics.

“I felt like I had a second chance to represent our country in a United States uniform,” she asserted. “Losing my leg wasn’t going to stop me.”

 

Proud Paralympian

After three years of intense training, Stockwell earned her spot on Team USA as a swimmer at the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing. The pride she felt walking out of the tunnel, “USA!” chants reverberating off the stadium walls, gave her chills. And yet, when it finally came time to get in the pool and give it her all, she couldn’t shake the bittersweet feeling that followed. 

“I went to Beijing, didn’t have a great competition, didn’t make the finals, didn’t have the best times in my swimming, and it was devastating because that’s what I was there for,” she said. “No one wants to get that far and be mediocre, and I was.”

It could have been a deeply discouraging experience — but Stockwell once again had her perspective checked when she was chosen to hold the American flag at the closing ceremony.

“Looking back now, that was very much part of the journey,” Stockwell reflected. “I realized in that moment it wasn’t about the medals, it was about overcoming the loss of a leg and four years later being on that world’s biggest stage.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Stockwell competed in her first triathlon in 2009 and fell in love with the sport. When the paratriathlon was first added to the games at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, she seized the opportunity to redeem her performance in Beijing.

“It was one of the greatest moments of my life,”
she remembered with a smile. “It was a USA sweep. My teammates got gold and silver, and I got bronze.”

It wasn’t lost on Stockwell that it was another full-circle moment for her. The paratriathlon in Rio took place on September 11, 2016, fifteen years to the day since the events of 9/11 changed the course of her life by setting the Iraq War in motion.

“Someone recently asked me which means more to me, the Purple Heart, Bronze Star or bronze medal from Rio,” she said. “I didn’t go into war thinking I’m going to get a Purple Heart or Bronze Star. The bronze medal gave me this sense of accomplishment, representing all of the obstacles I had faced and overcome.”

Proud Parent

Stockwell’s journey after losing her leg even led to finding love. 

She and her husband, Brian Tolsma, met while working together at a prosthetics company in Chicago. In 2015, they married and had their son Dallas, just a year prior to Stockwell earning her first Paralympic medal in Rio. Their daughter Millie followed two years later.

“I hit the jackpot with Brian. He’s a wonderful husband and wonderful father. And my kids…” she paused, looking for the right words. “Being their mom is the best and hardest job in the world. They challenge me more than I’ve ever been challenged in my life. They’re my biggest motivators.”

After fracturing her back less than two months prior to the Paralympics in Tokyo in 2021, Stockwell said she was the “happiest fifth place finisher in the world.” She briefly considered retirement, acknowledging she was “older for her sport” at 41 years old. Key word: briefly. Three years later, Stockwell qualified for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris ­— her fourth time representing her country at the Paralympics. More than anything, she was excited to share it with her family.

“Everyone will be there, it will be awesome,” Stockwell beamed before the Games. “My kids will be cheering ‘Go, Mommy!’ I can’t explain how much that drives me to be better.” She placed fifth in her race on Sept. 2 in Paris. Brian, Dallas and Millie cheered her on and tossed her an American flag that she waved behind her as she crossed the finish line with a smile.

Aside from her Paralympic pursuits and parental duties, Stockwell keeps herself busy as a certified prosthetist, motivational speaker and co-founder of Dare2tri, a nonprofit established in 2011 with the mission to “enhance the lives of individuals with physical disabilities and visual impairments by building confidence, community, health and wellness through swimming, biking and running.”

“It’s another way of giving back and supporting youth, adults and service members that have physical disabilities and showing them what
they’re capable of,” Stockwell said.

Back at EPHS, Wallenberg continues to keep in touch with her former student through email and follows her journey on social media. Every year in her AP Literature class, she parallels Stockwell’s story with the classic poem “Beowulf” and asks students to consider, “What makes a hero?”

“They do research based on the Anglo-Saxon heroic ideal and how it relates to modern-day characteristics of a hero — both on a societal and personal level,” Wallenberg said. “Students are fascinated with her story.”​

This story includes contributions from EPHS Multimedia Story Production students Tori Schlagel, Lauren Rice (‘24), and Isabel McNulty (‘24).