For anyone, crossing the finish line of a long race is a tremendous accomplishment. For Julia Stoffel, it also means something more.
Julia’s path to running was paved with unthinkable tragedy and remarkable perseverance. Each mile she runs and every race she completes stands for a bigger purpose.
“Running has given me so much. It’s completely changed my life,” says Julia, a palliative care nurse practitioner with ThedaCare Cancer Care. “It’s really empowered me to … think we have such an immense capability of doing more than we ever thought.”
Loss and Learning
May 3, 2015, was the kind of placid spring day that draws families outdoors to enjoy the first taste of warm weather. That was the case for the Stoffel family, who were on the Fox Cities Trestle Trail when a gunman committed a senseless act of violence. The shooting took the lives of Adam Bentdahl, a 31-year-old Appleton man, along with Jon and Olivia Stoffel. Olivia was just 11 years old. Erin Stoffel, Jon’s wife and Olivia’s mom, survived the shooting.
John and Olivia were Julia’s brother-in-law and niece. In the weeks, months and years following the tragedy, Julia and her husband navigated their grief together.
Just 27 years old at the time of the shooting and a new mom herself, Julia and her family were suddenly facing the unspeakable. The experience led her to question many aspects of her life, including her then-role as a hospice nurse for ThedaCare.
After bereavement leave, Julia spoke to her leader and expressed her doubts about her ability to return to a job that brought her close to death and dying every day. Her leader encouraged her to give it a few months.
“She said, ‘You might have a lot to offer these patients. This might make you better in your role and more empathetic,” Julia recalls. “And it definitely did so.”
First Steps
Two separate but related happenings combined to bring Julia to running, a pastime she had never envisioned for herself.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Julia and her husband started grief counseling. The therapist recommended the couple do something after and suggested running.
“I had never run in my entire life. I was like, ‘I think you’re nuts,’” says Julia, whose limited frame of reference at the time had been a misguided high school coach who told her she’d never be a runner because she didn’t have the right type of body for it.
Around that same time, Julia began working with her first hospice patient since returning from her leave. He was a man in his 40s with a glioblastoma who would wear a Boston Marathon shirt. He had run the race several times. Julia, conversely, says she didn’t even know how long a marathon was.
“He would ask me to take him out on his front porch at night after work He just wanted to see people running. He would call them the after-workers,” Julia says. “He would close his eyes and say he could imagine what they were thinking and what the wind would feel like on their face.”
Julia and her patient would also talk about the prospect of her taking up running. Her resistance remained strong at first.
“It’s so hard, and it hurts, and my lungs burn, and it’s just terrible,” Julia told him.
He told her one day, she would love it. She would meet other people who run. It would change her life.
Still skeptical, Julia started the Couch to 5K training program. She signed up for her first race in November 2015 — the Turkey Trot — mistakenly thinking it was a 5K (3.1 miles), when really it was 5 miles.
“I got to mile three, and I realized that I had two more miles to go, and I was not happy.,” Julia says, but nevertheless she persevered and had a success to share. “I was able to tell [my patient] that I ran that, and then he died shortly after.”
Newfound Passion
In the ensuing years, the predictions of Julia’s patient came true. She found a running group, Moms Run This Town, and made countless new friends.
As Julia’s commitment to running increased, so did her miles. In 2016, she ran her first half marathon in Green Bay. In fall of that year, she honored her family by running across the trestle trail as part of the ThedaCare Half Marathon through the Fox Cities Marathon.
“I really think God gave me running as a gift at a time in my life when I needed it,” Julia says. “It’s just changed my life in ways that this patient told me it would and that I never thought it would.”
Julia also continued to grow in her career. She first found her way into her profession in an improbable way. As would become a theme in her life, she initially told herself she wasn’t cut out for healthcare. Dreams of a journalism career gave way to worries about the job market in that field. Julia’s dad encouraged her to look at becoming a certified nursing assistant (CNA). She was hesitant at first and then fell in love with it.
At 19, Julia joined ThedaCare as a CNA. Throughout the years and with the organization’s support, she would progress in her nursing career, earning degrees in licensed practical nursing, registered nursing and bachelor of science nursing before becoming a nurse practitioner.
“The organization has always just been really special to me,” Julia says of ThedaCare. “We’re very people-oriented and community-oriented, and that has always really resonated with me.”
‘Making the Miles Matter’
In 2024, Julia’s family would suffer another setback when her dad was diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 metastatic acral melanoma, a rare type of skin cancer.
Throughout the years, Julia’s parents had watched and cheered her running accomplishments. Visiting her parents in Florida, she signed up for a race. Realizing it would probably be the last time her dad would see her run, Julia decided to wear a Wonder Woman costume to make him laugh and smile. At the same time, inspiration struck.
“While I was running that race, I thought, I wonder if I could do 40 half marathons by the time I’m 40,” says Julia, who was 36 at the time. “And if I was going to do that, could I raise money for something that potentially could have changed my dad’s life?
40 by 40
From there, Julia decided to run 40 half or full marathons by age 40 to raise money for cancer support and research. She reached out to the Spierings Cancer Foundation of Little Chute. The organization provides financial support to local families affected by cancer, enhances medical care for cancer patients in the Fox Cities and funds cancer research in Wisconsin.
As a palliative care nurse practitioner in cancer care, Julia has seen firsthand the impact of the organization. That ranges from providing gas cards for people to get to appointments to helping fund critical cancer research.
“All the money stays in our state for cancer research,” Julia says. “It’s out of cancer research that we’re really able to help people live their best lives and to stay alive. It’s like the hands and feet of what we should be doing as a community.”
Julia will turn 40 in January 2028. With 34 half marathons and three full marathons completed to date, she’s well on her way toward reaching her aim. With that in sight, she’s already set a new lifetime goal of raising $10,000 for cancer research.
Today, Julia runs in honor of her brother-in-law, her niece, her dad, her glioblastoma patient and countless other people she’s worked with in palliative care. It keeps her going when the physical strain becomes intense.
Reflecting on all she’s endured and accomplished over the years, Julia stays rooted firmly in gratitude. She’s also learned to challenge her beliefs about what’s possible for herself.
“I don’t know if I’d have gotten into running if I didn’t have grief to work through. All of it has changed my whole perspective. I don’t know who I’d be without the adversities I’ve faced,” she says. “Working in this line of work, you can’t help but have a perspective of gratitude. My mindset is, I get to do this. I just really want to help as many people as I can.”
