They are out there in stunning, shameful, growing numbers. One was living on a riverbank. At a time when they should be connected and covered, claiming the small rewards of their country’s gratitude, they are instead slipping out of contact with their old lives and slipping out of sight.

Unless someone goes looking for them, there is a very good chance that some of them will never come back in.

Rhode Island claims the number-two spot in the country in the number of homeless people per capita. But what makes that figure even more damning is that between a quarter and a third of those homeless are military veterans.

“You do the math,” says Dr. Thomas O’Toole.

O’Toole is the chief of primary care at the Veterans Hospital in Providence, and since 1992 he has worked with homeless veterans. He calls the statistics “very disturbing.” They’re also outrageous and totally unacceptable.

When he came to Providence two years ago he set up a clinic at the hospital. It offers open access to homeless veterans. O’Toole says he doesn’t want to put veterans “through the hoops.” The clinic offers everything from medical care to food and clothing, benefit counseling and housing. On a single day recently, 29 veterans showed up.

“We’re seeing a lot from Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re starting to see men and women. Things just kind of fell apart for them — PTSD, traumatic brain injury, alcohol and drug problems.”

Sometime in September, O’Toole and members of his staff will go looking for veterans who, for whatever reason, have fallen through the safety net and onto the streets. They will go looking in a van equipped to assess the veterans’ needs and hook them up with services.

The van will be part of an amazing, living memorial to a soldier who died young. It will help bring veterans in from the bad places.

“Basically, all I’m trying to do is carry out Greg’s wishes,” says Lisa Zavota.

Lisa and Jerry Zavota are buying the Homeless Veterans Outreach Van as one of the ongoing ways in which they honor the memory of their son Lt. Gregory Zavota, who was a 2005 graduate of West Point and a 2001 graduate of Barrington High School. He was an Eagle Scout, an athlete, a church volunteer. He was also, says his mother, a “hot ticket.”

“He was an amazing person. He loved to do things for other people.”

It is just nine months since Greg Zavota died in what his mother describes only as a “tragic accident.” He was due to go to Afghanistan with his unit two days after Christmas.

“Last August was the last time I saw him,” she says. “He was happy with his unit and happy with his job.”

After West Point, Zavota trained as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. He took a reduction in rank and pay so he could fly medevac missions.

Since his death at 24, his parents have gone on a mission of their own to do things for veterans and those still serving that are in keeping with the caring spirit of their accomplished son.

Lisa Zavota contacted U.S. Sen. Jack Reed about ways to honor her son, and that eventually led her to the Veterans Hospital. But the outreach van is not the only thing that will be provided to ensure a lasting connection between Lt. Gregory Zavota and the troops.

There are also donations to Operation Support Our Troops and to the Rhode Island Veterans Home for improvements in the physical-therapy unit and creation of a game room. There is the Gregory F. Zavota Humanitarian Scholarship which will be administered by the Narragansett Council of the Boy Scouts.

And there are a bunch of care packages sent to Charlie Company 6-101 Aviation Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. That was Greg’s unit, now in Afghanistan.

But it is the van that seems such a fitting expression of a family honoring the memory of its soldier. There are people who this very minute are out there in the shadows, closed in by problems they can’t deal with. And that van will roll up and present them with real possibilities. Greg Zavota would surely approve.

“We’re seeing guys in their 40s and 50s,” says Dr. O’Toole. “They often have a harder time with the transition. Their families, their careers have been disrupted.

“If we can intervene early in the crisis there’s a better chance for change.”

A better chance — that’s what the van given in Greg Zavota’s memory will provide. And it will provide it for a long, long time.

bkerr@projo.com