BALLSTON LAKE — A couple is asking the public to give their 14-year-old son a hand, literally.

Suzanne and Paul Wolfe are launching several fundraisers, including luncheons, concerts and raffles, to raise money to buy their son, Branden, a bionic replacement for his right hand, which was amputated after an accident in October.

The family needs to raise $20,000 to cover their portion of the cost of the $80,000 prosthetic hand. A benefit concert and dinner will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday at Northern Lights in Clifton Park.

On October 14, 2007, Suzanne dropped Branden off at a friend’s house. What she didn’t know was that her son and three friends then went to a wooded area off Ruhle Road South in Malta with homemade explosive devices two of the boys constructed from information found on the Internet. The kids planned to ignite the devices and videotape it, but when Branden lit one, the fuse malfunctioned and the resulting explosion took off three fingers, which doctors weren’t able to save, and a portion of his right hand.

“We all could have curled up and refused to deal with it, but that’s not who we are,” said Suzanne Wolfe, who is a nurse. “We didn’t let ourselves become overwhelmed by this. I’m not a mom to pity my son; I feel bad about what happened, but now we move on and stay positive about it.”

The couple is looking to get Branden the i-LIMB Hand, which looks and acts like a real human hand and is considered a next-generation prosthetic device. The state-of-the-art hand is so new, only about 15 teens around the world are using it, and when Branden receives his, he'll be the first teenager in New York state to do so.