Jen Lee discovered a new way to represent his country.
He went from wearing an army uniform to putting on a Team USA jersey. He became the first active-duty soldier selected for a U.S. Paralympic winter sports team and went on to win three gold medals as a goaltender for the U.S. sled hockey team.
“Not just a dream come true, but a surreal experience, for sure,” he said on NBC Local’s “My New Favorite Olympian” ahead of the 2026 Milan Cortina Paralympics, which begin Friday.
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Lee — who was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and raised in San Francisco — grew up playing with G.I. Joe toys and watching war movies. As a sophomore in high school, he became inspired to join the military after seeing the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I felt the sense of patriotism for the first time being here ... as an immigrant,” he said. “I felt the sense of everyone coming together.”
He enlisted in the Army as a helicopter mechanic in 2005 and began his military career in Hawaii, where he took up motorcycle riding. Two years later, he was deployed to Iraq. In 2009, he thought his days of serving his country in combat and playing sports came to a sudden and devastating end.
Just 22 years old at the time, Lee was riding his motorcycle back to the airfield where he was stationed in Georgia when he was struck by a vehicle in Jacksonville, Florida. He was thrown off the motorcycle and suffered a leg injury that would require amputation.
“When that happened, that really just kind of sucked the soul out of me for a little bit,” Lee said. “I had no idea if I could even walk again, if I could run again, can I even continue to serve my country? All those things ... were in question, and no one had the answers.”
At the time of the accident, Lee said he was only a few months from being deployed to Afghanistan for what would have been his second combat deployment. Instead, he was transferred to a military rehabilitation in Texas called Center for the Intrepid.
There, he rehabbed alongside military members who also suffered amputations, limb trauma and severe burns.
“As much as I wanted to feel sorry for myself, those guys were pushing, those guys wanted to get back,” Lee said. “Their mentality was they wanted to continue to fight, they wanted to continue the mission. They wanted to, you know, do everything they still can, even though they were missing one leg, two legs…They set the example and they gave me the spark to be better again, to have that mental capacity not to give up or not to quit.”
Lee soon had a new mission: to win a gold medal.
He was told by his therapist in 2009 that he had to pick a sport as part of his rehabilitation.
“I was like, ‘What the heck is sled hockey?’” he said. Its rules are quite similar to ice hockey, but players sit on specially designed sleds that sit on top of two hockey skate blades, and each player holds two sticks that allow them to both hit the puck as well as move the sled around.
“Everything is upper body, so it was definitely tough,” Lee said.
He was introduced to the sport by Janis Roznowski, the founder of Operation Comfort, an organization supporting wounded, sick and injured service members through adaptive sports and activities that are modified to encourage people with disabilities to participate.
Roznowski and the organization, in 2005, took a group of amputee soldiers to Idaho where they participated in sled hockey.
“These guys, their eyes were so very sad,” she recalled. “And then they started skating, falling over, having to get up, having to learn. But man, they did it. And so anyway, when they came off the ice, their eyes were sparkling like diamonds, and they were laughing and talking and comparing notes. And I looked at them and I thought, if this sport will bring the lights back in these guys’ eyes again, we’re going to start a sled hockey team.”
A few years later, Lee tried out for and made that team, the San Antonio Rampage.
“I fell in love with it immediately,” he said. “I fell in love with just being on the ice, putting on the gear. ... Playing on the ice with those guys, you don’t think about those dark times.”
He was soon introduced to — and playing on — the sport’s grandest stage.
“I had no idea what the Paralympics was,” he said.
He soon learned, being named to the U.S. National Sled Hockey Team ahead of the 2014 Sochi Paralympics. Serving as backup goalie to Hall of Famer Steve Cash, Lee took home his first gold medal. He added another at the 2018 PyeongChang Paralympics, again as backup to Cash.
Jen was named starting goalie in 2021 after Cash retired. He not only guided the U.S. sled hockey team to a third straight gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Paralympic Games, but he did so in dominant fashion, not allowing a goal in the four games he played.
“I was very fortunate and very grateful that we were able to play so well and dominate pretty much the entire Games,” he said.
Now 39 years old, he is set to return to the ice at the 2026 Milan Cortina Paralympics. Lee is seeking his fourth career gold medal as he continues to serve the United States on ice.
“Now you’re representing your country again,” he said, “in a different way.”
