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Fresh off Olympic gold medals and world championships, the Wisconsin native has become one of America’s most recognizable winter athletes. Recently, he made headlines when he shared one of his Olympic gold medals with President Donald Trump during a Wisconsin appearance.
Long before the world knew Jordan Stolz, however, Washington County deputies knew his father.
Retired Deputy Dirk Stolz spent 29 and a half years serving in law enforcement and earned a nickname that followed him throughout his career. According to Washington County Sheriff Martin Schulteis, Dirk was “The Bloodhound” of Washington County.
Dirk Stolz is not only the father and first coach of Jordan Stolz, he is also a deputy who built a reputation for finding suspects who didn’t want to be found.
This is Dirk’s story.
Editor’s note: The following video shows Olympic champion Jordan Stolz sharing one of his gold medals with President Donald Trump during a recent Wisconsin event.
A deputy’s calling
Dirk Stolz’s desire to become a police officer led him to his first job in law enforcement, taking a position on a joint drug task force. He spent 11 months undercover, hanging in bars, buying drugs and making cases.
After proving his worth, he was hired as a police officer for the City of Brown Deer, but transferred from there after 11 months to take a position as a night-shift patrol deputy for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin. Here he found his calling.
Dirk chose to stay on nights for his entire career because, “I became a police officer to do police work. I loved it and didn’t want to get stuck on a desk somewhere. It also worked well for the family. My wife Jane worked days as a dental hygienist and our schedules allowed for one of us to be home with the kids at all times.”
Years later, that same commitment to family would help create one of the world’s greatest speed skaters.
A frozen pond and a dream
Dirk and his wife Jane kept their children busy with real-world play and projects rather than phones and television. However, in 2010 both kids were watching TV when they became equally mesmerized watching Apolo Ohno speed skate.
Five-year-old Jordan and six-and-a-half-year-old Hannah were captivated by Ohno’s speed and skill and their joint request was, “We want to do that! Can we? Can we?”
Dirk and Jane bought them skates and made a short track on their pond. The Stolzes purchased hockey skates at first for the kids and for themselves as well. Jane did not trust the pond’s ice at first, so she made them wear life jackets in case they went through the ice.
The kids took to skating like pandas to bamboo. Both insisted on racing and going fast.
Dirk said he first noted their potential by observing their competitive nature: “Some kids would probably sit on the ice and pout if they were racing and fell, but when these two fell while they were racing, they bounded up and continued to race. I knew there was something special about that.”
The determination Dirk observed on the ice would become a recurring theme throughout the years that followed.
In short order, Mom and Dad decided they would take Hannah and Jordan to the Pettit National Ice Skating Center in Milwaukee, where Olympians have trained since 1992. There was a Learn to Speed Skate class Dirk and Jane felt the kids would benefit from.
Ironically, something happened on the night shift before Dirk’s first trip to the center with the kids that allowed him to take a few days off the hard way.
A life-changing week
On March 20, 2010, a deputy had contact with a woman and her children in a car. She was upset and crying and said her boyfriend was acting crazy and had armed himself with an AR-style rifle.
Dirk and other officers went to the house in the Town of Polk and set up a perimeter.
“When he found out we were outside, he tried to draw us in by firing a shot to make it sound like a suicide,” Dirk said. “We didn’t go in, though, and it was good because he had positioned a mirror in a hallway to watch our approach and set up an ambush.”
Failing to draw them into the house, the suspect fired dozens of times inside and outside the residence, after which he crawled out a window and fled armed with a handgun. Dirk said he tried to envision the suspect’s probable direction of flight and positioned himself accordingly.
After a brief wait, Dirk spotted the suspect armed with a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun approaching him on foot between two houses.
“Drop the weapon!” Dirk shouted.
Instead of complying, the homicidal suspect swung his arm up and fired at Dirk.
Dirk and Deputy Jeremy Miller fired simultaneously, hitting the suspect in the hand and shoulder, effectively stopping the threat. The suspect was taken into custody, treated and later incarcerated.
Dirk was placed on administrative leave after finishing his reports, after which he and Jane took Hannah and Jordan to their first formal speed skating session. Dirk had a few days off earned the hard way, spent with the kids.
Days later, Dirk’s officer-involved shooting was declared justifiable and Deputy Stolz returned to duty.
The suspect was sentenced to 16 years in prison along with 10 years of extended supervision for recklessly endangering officers.
While the incident became one of the defining moments of Dirk’s law enforcement career, another life-changing chapter had already begun. During his administrative leave, Dirk and Jane took Hannah and Jordan to their first formal speed skating session at the Pettit Center. Neither parent could have imagined where that journey would eventually lead.
The Bloodhound of Washington County
When I contacted Sheriff Martin Schulteis to ask about his retired deputy, Dirk Stolz, the sheriff declared, “He was a great cop! He was our Bloodhound.”
I asked Dirk, “How did you come to be known as a bloodhound?”
Dirk shared, “Whenever someone ran from a domestic, a chase or any crime, I would wait until the other officers were done with their search and I would then always try to make an effort to find the suspect and I usually did.”
He continued, “Washington County has a lot of woods. A person hiding from officers who are driving around with spotlights will stay hidden. After the spotlights clear the area, suspects tend to move.”
Over time, Dirk learned to think like the people he was tracking. Some would move toward a lighted area. Others would strike out for a road. In difficult terrain, many would eventually emerge from the tree line once they believed the danger had passed.
An avid hunter, Dirk relied on his ears and nose as much as his eyes. He could tell the difference between a person moving through the woods and an animal. Being a nonsmoker, he was also highly sensitive to the smell of cigarettes and intoxicants and could sometimes detect a suspect before he ever saw one.
To improve his odds even further, Dirk purchased a used FLIR thermal-imaging device for $2,500, giving him another valuable tool for finding suspects in the dark.
In one case a suspect fled on foot after a serious battery in a violent domestic. Dirk positioned himself watching a tree line with an open area adjacent to it. Using his FLIR, he spotted the suspect emerge from the woods and head along the tree line.
Dirk wanted to cut him off but knew his silhouette would be visible to the suspect. Therefore, Dirk made his move mimicking the exaggerated power-walking movement of someone out for an early-morning workout. The suspect bought it and kept moving without deviating from his path.
Once Dirk was ahead of the suspect and in his direct path, he curled up next to a line of landscaping boulders so in the limited light he would look like just another rock.
The ruse worked.
After the suspect walked right by him, one of the boulders transformed into a deputy and sprang up to make the arrest. Dirk recalled, “The look on his face was hilarious.”
The patience, observation skills and persistence that earned Dirk the nickname Bloodhound would later prove equally valuable in helping his children pursue their dreams.
Building a champion
Dirk and Jane teamed up to transport the kids to the Pettit Center to train, where legendary speed skating coach Bob Fenn spotted them working out. Seeing potential in both children, Bobby asked to coach them. Dirk and Jane hesitated because of the cost, but after some discussion decided the benefits made it worthwhile.
They told Fenn, “Yes, please,” and Bobby took the kids under his wing.
Even though she showed great promise, Dirk said, “Hannah took another path.”
She developed a passion for taxidermy, specializing in wild birds. While Hannah pursued a different passion, Jordan remained focused on speed skating.
For years Jordan continued speed skating training, concentrating first on short track and then long track. However, tragedy struck on Oct. 8, 2017, when his coach died suddenly. Coach Fenn’s mentorship initially passed to Coach Shani Davis, but when Davis left to train Chinese skaters, Jordan’s coaching needs were seamlessly passed to Bob Corby.
Corby expertly prepared Jordan for the 2026 Olympics.
The family behind the medals
Jordan and Dirk partnered to design and build a training facility in their basement to develop the specialized strength a world-class speed skater needs.
So Jordan could watch his form, Jane found large mirrors at Goodwill and mounted them on the basement walls.
To maintain a low-fat, high-protein, Olympian-quality diet, Dirk and Jordan took hunting and fishing trips to Alaska. They filled their freezer with self-harvested moose and salmon aplenty.
An Olympic payoff
By this point, Jordan’s success was no longer measured in local races or regional competitions. The young skater who once raced across a backyard pond was emerging as one of the world’s elite speed skaters.
In 2024 Dirk retired from law enforcement, which allowed him to concentrate his efforts on helping Jordan achieve his Olympic dream.
The effort paid off.
At the 2024 and 2025 World Championships, Jordan won the 500m, 1000m and 1500m.
Jordan followed up those wins in the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics, achieving Olympic gold in the 500m and 1000m events and silver in the 1500m.
His entire family was there cheering him on.
Words of wisdom from Dirk Stolz
Dirk graciously shared a few insights on enjoying family and law enforcement to the fullest:
- It is amazing how much your kids can accomplish when you don’t give them a phone.
- Make your family your priority and you won’t regret it.
- Love your work and you will be better at it.
- Give 100 percent at work and you will enjoy your life, but don’t make “police officer” your personal identity. Police work is what you do, not who you are.
Today, Jordan Stolz stands atop the speed skating world with Olympic gold medals, world championships and international recognition.
For Dirk and Jane Stolz, however, the journey began much more simply: two curious children, a frozen pond and parents willing to invest their time, energy and love into helping their children chase a dream.
For a deputy known as “The Bloodhound,” Dirk Stolz spent a career finding people in the dark. His greatest discovery may have been recognizing the potential of a little boy racing across the ice.
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