Michael Phelps is out of the Olympic spotlight for now, but there's another American swimmer who'll be making waves in Beijing. Her name is Melissa Stockwell, and she's not only a world-class athlete but also a veteran who lost her left leg in Iraq. The soldier-turned-swimmer is one of the first veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom to represent the United States in the Paralympic Games, starting September 6.

Stockwell will be competing in the 100-meter butterfly, the 100-meter freestyle and the 400-meter freestyle. "Whatever the outcome is in Beijing," she wrote on her team's blog, "I know I gave it my all."

Giving her all is something that comes naturally to the friendly, freckle-faced swimmer. A born athlete -- first a gymnast growing up in Minneapolis, and then a diver at the University of Colorado at Boulder -- Stockwell participated in the ROTC and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. After being assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas, she was deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, in March, 2004.

Barely a month into her deployment, Stockwell was riding in an unarmored Humvee as part of a convoy along a supply road in northern Baghdad. "It was April 13, 2004," she recalled. "About 10 minutes into the ride, a roadside bomb went off and it hit our vehicle and we kind of swerved and it hit a guard rail and we kind of swerved back. Between the blast of the bomb and hitting the guard rail, it severed my left leg."

Stockwell was rushed into emergency surgery at the American hospital in the Green Zone, eventually completing her recovery and rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I think the total was about 15 surgeries," she said. For her service, Stockwell was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star Medal.

At Walter Reed, doctors fitted the future Paralympian with a prosthetic leg. "When you're young, you learn to walk but you don't really remember how to do it," she said about learning to use the prosthesis. "So taking those first steps was a difficult process." She now sports a state-of-the-art stars-and-stripes-painted titanium prosthesis.

During rehab, Stockwell was also taking the steps that would lead her to Beijing -- and a shot at a gold medal. "I started swimming pretty early on because it was easy to do," she said. "I didn't have to wear a prosthetic leg, so I could just kind of use my crutches to get into the pool and get some laps and then get out." After being medically retired from the Army, she started training with the goal of making the U.S. Paralympics team.

Stockwell's first big test came at the U.S. Paralympic trials in April. Her qualifying event was the 400-meter freestyle. "It was a now-or-never kind of thing," she remembered. "Normally, by the 200, I start to get tired and kind of fall off, but I just felt good the whole time and I kept going. The last 100 I heard the crowd cheering, and I was thinking, 'Are they cheering for me?' And I thought, 'If they're not, I'm going to pretend that they are.' So then I got to the wall and I touched the wall, and the crowd was going crazy."

When it was all over, Stockwell had earned a spot on the team, and -- with a time of 5:08:03 -- she had also broken the American record. "I looked up at the clock," she remembered. "I had to do a double take. I couldn't believe that was my time up there. It was one of those moments you wish you could live in forever because it was pretty cool."

"Achieving her goal of making the team was not her stopping point," U.S. Paralympics swim coach Jimi Flowers said. "The sky's the limit for her, and she really wants to go to Beijing and represent her country in a different way and also bring home some hardware around her neck."

Whether it's Baghdad or Beijing, this soldier-turned-swimmer stands ready to serve. "I couldn't be more proud and more honored to wear a uniform that says U.S.A.," she said.

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