Students rally to help disabled veteran
Seniors in Jamie Goodreau's high school history class learned Hancock was stuck in a modest mobile home for months, unable to travel the 70 miles to the nearest VA hospital in Los Angeles to have his bedsores treated or his rotting teeth fixed.
Goodreau's students, who each year raise a few thousand dollars for veterans, decided to make Hancock their cause.
Jamie Goodreau, who met Hancock at the annual Pride of the Nation Day, invited him to tell his story to her students.
Goodreau's veteran projects normally end with the summer. This year's group vowed to continue the project they call Operation All The Way Home until Hancock has a new roof over his head. They have decided to build Hancock a new, handicapped accessible home from the ground up.
After Goodreau's students shocked Lancaster and neighboring Palmdale by raising $80,000 in four months - mainly by holding yard sales, pizza nights and peddling things like T-shirts and refrigerator magnets - the whole community began to get involved.
Six months after they started, the students have closed escrow on a $264,000 property. Blueprints have been drawn up for the new dwelling and the students plan to break ground next month.
Big box stores are offering discounts on building supplies. A construction contractor has volunteered to pitch in when the building begins. An architectural firm provided the blueprints. The real estate agent waived her commission. The credit union at nearby Edwards Air Force Base is kicking in money from new loans it writes.
Hancock was driving a tank through the streets of Baghdad on May 29, 2007, when the vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device that blew a hole through its armor and set it ablaze. A chunk of shrapnel lodged in his spine, paralyzing his legs so that he couldn't get out. It happened on his 21st birthday.
Due to leave the military in a few months, he'd bought a mobile home near his mother's place in Lancaster. It was small but a good first home for a young guy with a wife, two kids and a dog. But he hadn't planned on coming home in a wheelchair.
After his wife left him, his 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, his mother and stepfather became his caretakers.
"They gave up their last summer of high school for me," Hancock said in a voice filled with awe.