A line of assistance stretched from Connecticut to Hawaii to Micronesia on Thursday for a triple-amputee Army veteran wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq in 2003.

Hilario “HB” Bermanis II, a former 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper from Pohnpei, was presented a $90,000 specially outfitted red Toyota Sienna van in Honolulu and a $30,000-to-$40,000 power wheelchair to drive into it.

“I don’t know what to say. I have no words,” the 35-year-old veteran said at Keehi Lagoon Memorial. The donation “makes me very, very happy. Thank you, all.”

The thanks were directed at Help Our Military Heroes, out of Connecticut, which has delivered 82 adaptive vans to wounded veterans; the Veterans Affairs Pacific Islands Health Care System, which provided more than $75,000 for the power wheelchair and modifications to the van; the Semper Fi Fund, which helped with the van’s cost and travel for Bermanis and his father; and Soderholm Bus &Mobility, which retrofitted the van and is helping Bermanis with the adaptations.

Few serve in the U.S. military, “but everybody can serve those who serve with a dollar (contribution), with their time, with volunteerism,” said Connecticut resident Laurie Hollander, president of Help Our Military Heroes.

Bermanis and a fellow 82nd Airborne paratrooper were guarding a weapons cache in Baghdad in June 2003 when they were hit by rocket-propelled grenades. Bermanis lost both legs and his left arm, and the other soldier was killed, the Pentagon said.

The new van, with a ramp, lever control for gas and braking, and a spinner knob on the steering wheel that has turn signals and other features, replaces a 2004 Ford Freestar that broke down several years ago.

Hollander, who lived in Hawaii from 1984 to 1989, started Help Our Military Heroes in 2009 after going to a football game several years earlier and seeing a van being presented to an amputee veteran.

The mother of Army West Point and Marine sons asked the woman running the event why she was providing a van, and “she said, ‘Oh, you don’t know. Your son’s benefits will assist him into a vehicle if he is catastrophically injured — but it won’t pay for the whole vehicle.’”

Some increasingly serious fundraising followed, and Help Our Military Heroes presented its first adaptive van in 2010 to a triple-amputee Marine, Hollander said. Her husband, Ted, is chairman of the nonprofit.

Ted Hollander recalled getting an email from Bermanis in July saying the van he had driven for 12 years had died and asking whether Help Our Military Heroes could do anything.

“So the first thing that I did was I looked at my globe and said, ‘Where the heck is Pohnpei?’” Ted Hollander said. Pohnpei, formerly known as Ponape, is an island in the Federated States of Micronesia.

The van was presented Thursday at an informal parking lot ceremony at Keehi Lagoon Memorial near Lagoon Drive. The memorial, which is often used for weddings and family gatherings, was established by Disabled American Veterans.

“HB personifies the sacrifices and the bravery and the courage that so many veterans bring to our country and by serving for us in the military. We have a good number of veterans in Micronesia,” said Kandhi Elieisar, consul general for the Federated States of Micronesia in Honolulu.

Bermanis became a U.S. citizen in September 2003 in Washington, D.C., with the oath of allegiance administered by then-Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Eduardo Aguirre.

“It’s quite timely that we have HB visiting Honolulu at this time because the Hawaii state Legislature is actually considering a resolution to extend benefits to veterans from the Federated States of Micronesia,” Elieisar said.

House Concurrent Resolution 176 urges Hawaii’s congressional delegation to work with the VA to develop a program or pass legislation to provide veterans from Compact of Free Association nations with access to high-quality medical care within their communities. Micronesia is a U.S. protectorate.

In 2015 Bermanis was in Honolulu with his father, also named Hilario, to get fitted for a high-tech $45,000 i-limb Ultra Revolution prosthetic forearm and hand at the VA’s outpatient therapy program on the grounds of Tripler Army Medical Center.

The limb has five different motors in each finger and is sensitive enough to allow a handshake with the right amount of grip.

Bermanis will get some driving lessons — his prosthetic hand will control the brake and gas — and then his new van will be shipped to Guam and then Pohnpei.

“It makes my life easier,” the veteran said of the new van.