When Jerral Hancock came home from the Iraq war missing one arm and a paralyzed body that was burned all over, he was a hero to this Mojave Desert town.

But he was eventually forgotten.

Then the students in Jamie Goodreau's U.S. history classes learned that Hancock had once got stuck in his modest mobile home for half a year when his handicapped-accessible van broke down, and that the hallways of his tiny house were so narrow he couldn't get his wheelchair through most of them.

"They would fix that, Goodreau's students decided, by building Hancock a new home from the ground up —one that is handicapped accessible," reports the Associated Press. "It would be their end-of-the-year project."

It's six months later and the students have closed escrow on a $264,000 property.

(READ the AP story at the LA Times)