The latter is a nonprofit group that supports people with disabilities and helps them maintain an active lifestyle. Operation Rebound has a similar mission, Sgt. Cila said, but is designed specifically for injured military personnel and first responders, such as police or ambulance workers.

The groups provide grants for things like equipment, training and transportation to races.

"I do a lot of speaking to kids and I also try to reach out to soldiers and show them that, 'Hey, I was in the same position you were and you're going to get out of it and get back to what you did before you were injured,'ââ" he said. "It doesn't have to be a triathlon or a bike race, it's whatever you did before that made you feel whole. It could be tennis with the wife, or golfing."

After his injury, Sgt. Cila spent six months as an in-patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., followed by five more months as an outpatient.

"Even after I was home, I still underwent 15 to 20 more surgeries, all on my arm," he said.

In December, his left hand was amputated slightly above the wrist.

"They tried to save as much as they could, but it was completely non-functioning," he said.

He now has a prosthetic hand, which doesn't move and which he uses to "fill out the shirt," and a robotic hand, which he uses other times and which can pick things up.

"When I first came home from Walter Reed, I went through a good year and a half to two years of depression," Sgt. Cila said.

One day, a friend, Charlie Rey of Riverhead, brought up the idea of competing in a local 5K race.

"At the time, it might as well have been running from here to the moon," he recalled. "In the condition I was in, the thought of running three miles just seemed absurd." But they slowly started training, he said.

Another friend told him about the Challenged Athlete Foundation, and he was able to get a grant to pay for his coaching.

"It was a real tough process," he said. "I've always been real athletic, but I had never been involved in these types of sports before the injury. I was a football player and weight lifter, the complete opposite of what I'm doing now."

Sgt. Cila has since competed in five half-iron man competitions and about a dozen triathlons, he said.

He's retired from the military and in the process of retiring from his civilian job as a cook at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverside, so he has more time to train.

He says he spends six hours a day training.

Sgt. Cila enlisted in the reserves right after Sept. 11, and was called to active duty in May 2003. He was due to return home in September 2005, just three months after he was wounded.

It was the Sept. 11 attacks that inspired him to join the military.

He recalls that the attacks led to the cancellation of a vacation trip he had planned to Las Vegas, and that he was pretty mad about that for about two days.

"But then, being back at work, seeing people I knew who had lost husbands and brothers and cousins," he said. "I was embarrassed at myself for being mad that my vacation was canceled and people who were just going to work were killed by terrorists.

"I mulled it over for a couple of days and thought, 'These guys came right into my backyard and killed innocent people.' My intent when I enlisted was to go to war, so I enlisted with the infantry and I tried to do whatever I possibly could to get into the fight. That was my intent from day one."

He said he stills gets angry when he thinks of Sept. 11, and equates his injury to a chess match.

"They kind of got the last move on me," he said.

While there was an opportunity to remain in the military even after his injury, he decided that wouldn't be fair to his wife, Anna, and their two young children.

"I didn't think it was fair to try and go back to prove a point and put the family through all that unneeded stress," he said.

Sgt. Cila said he's spoken with some injured veterans on Long Island about the program, but none were ready to begin participating in sports. So far, he said, he's the only wounded veteran from New York in the program, which has helped more than 600 veterans nationwide.

He said he hopes to compete in the 2012 Paralympics in London in cycling or triathlon and hopes to "continue helping troops use sports as a healing process."

Any regrets?

"After going through everything I went through, I wouldn't change anything," he said. "I have no regrets. Even with my injury, with the squad I had, it almost had to be me to take that hit, because if it was one of the younger guys or smaller guys, I don't think physically they would have been able to rebound as well as I did.

"I may have stood back a little further, but I wouldn't change anything."

tgannon@timesreview.com

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