posted October 01, 2007 10:20 PM              

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Strangers help wounded veteran and family

* Story Highlights
* Wounded veteran paying financial price for service
* When military checks stopped, family suffered
* Strangers stepped up to help

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(AP) -- Sgt. Jason Nielson's wife could do nothing but cry when his military paychecks stopped arriving last November.
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Sgt. Jason Nielson holds his 3-month-old daughter Riley in his Harrington, Delaware, home.

Christmas was coming, and they couldn't afford toys for their two kids.

Nor did they have $900 to fill their propane tank for heating or $250 to fix their backed-up septic system.

In fact, they worried about losing their home in Delaware.

And they had already been through so much.

Nielson had shipped out to Iraq as a military police officer in February 2005, shortly after his daughter Hailey was born. The family had lived in Phoenix then and he served in the Arizona National Guard.

Eight months after his deployment, he was shot in a Baghdad street. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, other internal injuries and his legs were paralyzed.

During his months of treatment at VA and military hospitals in the East, his wife Krista took a leave from her job as an insurance agent to be with him. After several weeks absence from work, she was fired.
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When the couple eventually returned to Phoenix, their home needed to be adapted for a wheelchair. Nielson would be eligible for up to $50,000 in grant money to modify the house once he was off the active-duty rolls and in the system of the Department of Veterans Affairs. But the bureaucracy moved slowly.

"Nobody was helping us," Krista Nielson said.

Frustrated, they sold the house and moved to Harrington, Delaware, to be near family.

Then in November, when Nielson was finally shifted from active duty into the VA's system, his regular military pay stopped coming. And the VA check that should have replaced it never showed up.

To the Nielsons' relief, a couple of Pennsylvania good Samaritans named Nick and Jackie Constantino stepped in. The Constantinos paid the Nielsons' house payments along with the heating and plumbing bills. They also hosted them on Christmas Eve and bought their children gifts.

The Constantinos had been donating to nonprofit groups that help wounded troops. But they wanted to be more connected to the people they were helping and learned of the Nielsons through one of the aid groups. Nick Constantino says they now consider the Nielsons family.

As for the Nielsons: "I've never been offered help, and it was hard for me to accept the help, and it took me a long time to ... realize that we needed help," said Jason Nielson.

Another blessing followed. Homes For Our Troops, which builds houses for injured soldiers, teamed up with Lacrosse Homes to build the family a new four-bedroom house with an exercise room -- a project worth about $300,000.

"Who does that? Who gives a house? I didn't know what to say to them," Nielson said.

The wounded vet is in a vocational rehab program and plans to enter college soon. He hopes to work for a wildlife agency. He is able to stand up with braces and he can drive with hand controls.

Soon, the Nielsons will move into their new house. But that's not the only good news they got this year.

On June 26, his wife gave birth to their third child, a girl. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/09/24/coming.home.family.ap/index.html