Group gives paralyzed Iraq veteran new hope

PARKER, Colorado (CNN) -- Matt Keil didn't wait for a call to serve his country.

He enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school in 2000, and when the Iraq war started, Keil volunteered to go. Because he was single, he wanted to take the place of a parent, wife or husband who would otherwise be sent.

"I wanted to go over and serve my country," he recalled.

After a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, Keil returned home to Colorado, where he met a young woman named Tracy who lived in the same apartment complex. He says he knew they were meant to be.

"I woke up one morning, and my roommate was gone. I called him up and asked him what he was doing. He said he was down by the pool hanging out," Keil said. "I asked him if there were any hot girls down there, and he said, 'Yeah, there are.' "

And the rest is history.

Matt and Tracy began dating and fell in love, but he was soon told that his unit was being sent back to Iraq. Even though he knew redeployment was part of his job, this time things were different. He and Tracy were engaged to be married. Watch their story of love interrupted »

At the time, the enemy in Iraq was growing stronger, and Keil's unit was headed to Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a violent insurgent stronghold. Keil had been in Ramadi in 2004 and knew the mission would be dangerous.

"They were definitely built up a lot more on our second tour," he said. "Fallujah had just ended, and a lot of fighters from Fallujah had fled to nearby cities, and that's what we were up against."

Though their wedding plans were put on hold, Matt and Tracy decided to marry as soon as he could get a leave of absence.

"He got one of the earliest leaves you could take and came home in January," Tracy Keil remembered. "The main reason we got married was, even though we planned on having a bigger wedding later, what if something happened?"

On February 24, 2007, six weeks after their wedding, something did happen.

Keil, an infantry squad leader, was part of a major offensive to reclaim a portion of the city. His squad was ambushed, leaving 11 men severely wounded.

After helping evacuate his wounded men, Keil and his men entered an abandoned house. He went to the roof to look out for any potential danger.

"I jumped up on the tallest part of the roof to lay a camel net on top of the stairwell to kind of hide us from sniper fire," Keil said. "That's when I got shot right in the right side of the neck. Hit me like a ton of bricks."

It wasn't until he was back at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington that the couple realized the severity of his injury. Tracy was abruptly informed of his condition while Keil was heavily sedated.

"A doctor came in, thought I knew and made a comment about being paralyzed from the neck down," Tracy Keil recalled. "He didn't know that nobody had sat down to tell me. ... I just collapsed."

When Keil awoke, a doctor informed him that the bullet had hit his spinal cord and explained that he had a "Christopher Reeve-type injury." After the initial shock, Matt and Tracy began to understand the full implications.

For Keil, who was independent and admits to being stubborn, that was hard to swallow.

"Realizing that my wife was going to be helping me eat, cleaning me up, doing things like that, it was kind of devastating," he admitted.

But the newlyweds stayed optimistic and started focusing on the next steps. One of the most urgent issues was figuring out where they would live once Keil was out of the hospital. Tracy and her mother would bring Keil house-hunting.

"They would get me in a manual wheelchair and carry me up flights of stairs," Keil explained.

But they quickly became frustrated by what they found. Every house they saw would have to be dramatically modified to meet Keil's needs. And that meant costs that he and Tracy could not afford.

Then, in August 2007, when Keil was just a month away from being released from the hospital, his wife received news that would change this lives. This time the news was good. A friend of the couple's had submitted their story to Homes for Our Troops, an organization that builds specially adapted homes for disabled veterans.

John Gonsalves, founder and president of Homes for Our Troops, and the organization had selected Matt and Tracy to receive a house built specifically to meet their needs. Best of all, it was free.

"It's one of the most life-changing events that's ever happened to us, especially after being injured," Keil said. "We're going to be in this house that's fully accessible, has everything that it needs to take care of me, wide-open floor plan easy for Tracy to take care of me, and it's just an absolutely beautiful house."

After breaking ground in April, Homes for Our Troops utilized hundreds of volunteers, donations and community outreach to build the house so it would be ready for the dedication ceremony September 27.

Gonsalves, who started his career in construction, said he realized how many men and women would be returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with severe injuries and very specific needs. He wanted to volunteer with an organization that built homes designed for these disabled veterans. When he realized none existed, he started his own.

He says he's frustrated by the lack of urgency in helping America's veterans.

"It just seems like this time around, we weren't really asked to do anything. It was kind of 'go about your lives,' and I'm thinking, how can everybody just put it in the back of their mind and go about their daily lives when our sons and daughters and mothers and fathers are in a faraway place putting their lives on the line?" Gonsalves said.

Homes for Our Troops spends an average of $250,000 on each home, and only 7 percent of the group's money goes to administrative overhead. The rest goes directly to helping disabled veterans. It gives people in the community an opportunity to give back through volunteering.

The Keils' home is the 33rd project the organization has completed, and the group has 40 homes in the works.

There are 3 million veterans receiving disability compensation, and more than 250,000 of those are 100 percent disabled, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

With two wars still being waged and hundreds of thousands of America's military men and women fighting, it's likely the need for these homes will increase.

The home has given Tracy and Matt hope for their future together, and they look forward to giving back.

"This gives us security for our life," Tracy Keil said. "This is where we can have our kids, and this is where we can raise our family."

"We're going to live in this house for the rest of our lives, and eventually when it's our time to pass, we're going to find a family to donate it to that really needs it," Matt Keil said. "Our kids will be made well aware of that!"

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