are a powerful combination of wrenching grief and soaring pride," he said in 2006. In 2007, when he set up the veterans advocacy division of the attorney general's office, he declared, "My office will fight for those who fought for us." In interviews, several veterans from around the state said the office had helped them penetrate the thick bureaucracy of the state's benefits system, and applied a personal touch. When Paul Kingman, a Navy veteran who lost feeling in his feet after chemotherapy, called Mr. Blumenthal's office in 2007, he was trying to get a hearing for disability payments from the Social Security Administration. So it came as a surprise when Mr. Blumenthal himself got on the line. "He's a nice guy; he was cordial," Mr. Kingman, 50, said from his home in Naugatuck. "Busy people like him, with all the rest going on in the state, I was surprised he'd have time for little old me." A week after his conversation with Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Kingman learned that his hearing, which he had been trying to get for nearly four years, had been scheduled. "I don't know who he talked to, but next thing you know, I had a hearing," said Mr. Kingman, who at the time was living on $200 a month and food stamps. "He stood up for me." Cecelia Louis had a similar story: after five years trying to obtain health care from the Connecticut Veterans Affairs Department for her 78-year-old husband, a Korean War veteran,