Kathy McGee and Pam Logli don’t share the same blood, but they sure act like sisters. They talk over each other.

They finish each other’s thoughts. They acknowledge each other’s strengths in offhanded compliments. They say they’re so tied at the hip they’ve been called Dumb and Dumber.

Don’t think that for one minute.

The two nurses forged a friendship a decade ago while sharing an office at the old Woodmen Roberts Elementary School on West Woodmen Road, which by then had been converted into an administration building for Academy District 20’s special education and talented and gifted programs. Out of that friendship grew a thriving nonprofit, Nursing and Therapy Services of Colorado, which provides home nursing and occupational therapy for children with severe disabilities, and advocacy and financial guidance for parents trying to cope with sometimes huge costs and daunting bureaucracies.

The two women started the nonprofit in the basement of McGee’s home eight years ago, even as they continued their nursing duties during the day at D-20.

Over the years, as their client list expanded, the two added staff (nine of the 10 original employees still work for the women) and moved four times as the business grew. Finally, this month and into October, the friends are relocating the business back into the elementary school building where they first met. McGee and her husband purchased the building recently, after it had sat vacant but under contract for four years. El Paso County Assessor’s records indicate that the building sold for $800,000.

The nonprofit was not birthed as some sort of grand business scheme but out of personal experience. McGee and her husband, Dan, are parents of twins Kevin and Stephanie. Stephanie was born with severe disabilities. She’s legally blind, has severe grand mal seizures and is a quadriplegic. She requires around-the-clock care.

Soon after the McGees moved to Colorado Springs, Dan, an engineer, was laid off and had to return to California to work. McGee was left alone to care for the twins, work part time as a nurse, and negotiate the confusing world of government aid and private insurance to get the care her daughter needed.

 It was a soul-crushing time, and Logli quickly noticed the toll it was taking after McGee started working at the school.

“She saw all the trouble I was having with my daughter,” McGee said of her friend. “Home health care was completely lacking back then. I’d come into work with one hour’s sleep. I desperately needed some help.”

Today, Logli, 60, who retired from D-20 in 2007, runs the nursing side of the nonprofit, offering therapy and nursing services in the home to 290 children. The nonprofit bills clients’ private insurance and/or Medicaid for its services. Revenue is used to pay expenses, and the salaries of employees and those of Logli and McGee. The remainder is invested back in the business.

Logli also oversees a for-profit clinic owned by the McGees that works with insurance companies to offer occupational and physical therapy for anyone in the community, including special-needs kids, athletes and suburban dads with bad knees.

McGee, 55, who retired in 2008 from the school district, serves as case manager for all special-needs children in El Paso County who receive Medicaid.

That client list now stands at 1,118. Because she works with various home health agencies to get services for those children, she has divorced herself from the operations side of the nonprofit home health agency she and Logli founded to avoid conflicts of interest.

The new home for the nonprofit — which also houses a for-profit certified nursing assistant school owned by the McGees — is both a physical and an emotional homecoming for the two friends.

“I just love this building,” McGee said as she conducted a short tour through the 11,500-square-foot building tucked into a hillside in narrow Woodmen Valley. “I was so overwhelmed with emotion when we finally bought it. We’re home. It’s going back to the kids.”

And, especially one. Logli said the women’s ventures were initially inspired by the McGees’ experiences with Stephanie, now 20, and she remains an inspiration to the two women. Stephanie spends eight hours a day in the building with a helper, filing, shredding documents, even typing a newsletter with one finger.

“She’s precious. She’s a hoot,” McGee said of her daughter. “She’s a part of this.”

Interviews with nearly a dozen people — including mothers of disabled children helped by McGee and Logli, the clinic director of another home health care agency and a medical-equipment supplier — suggest the two women have earned a lot of respect in the community that has grown up around disabled children.

“I’ve seen them grow from Kathy’s basement to a basement office on Tejon to this (new building),” said Karen Flynn of ATG Rehab, which supplies medical equipment needed to care for disabled children. Flynn first met McGee when she worked for D-20.

“They’re great businesswomen. But they also care so much about the special-needs kids in the community,” she said.

“Kathy started this dream not to make money but to provide something of a niche that was needed in the community. Their growth is a testament to that.”

Daina Beck has dealt with a lot of home health care agencies over the years as she tried to get nursing and financial help for the care of her disabled daughter, Lindsey, now 19. She said in an industry where the quality of care — and caring — can vary widely, the two women have carved out what she called a “pocket of excellence.”

“I think the whole process started with a desire to create higher-quality home health and therapy,” she said.

“They are really great. They’re down-to-earth. They have a big heart and a great passion for serving the disability community. Kathy has been there. Kathy walks the walk.”

Today, the two women who hatched a dream in a small office a decade ago haven’t run out of ideas. They’re going to offer child care Saturday evenings so parents of disabled kids can have a night out by themselves.

They’re also considering expanding into Douglas County. And they’re toying with the idea of building an assisted-living facility, perhaps on acreage acquired with the new building, to care for disabled children as they age and their parents are no longer able to care for them.

“That’s our final pie in the sky,” Logli said.

Kathy McGee, from left, along with nephew Allen Verelly, who is in the student nurse aide program, and Molly the dog. Kathy’s business partner, Pam Logli, and daughter Stephanie McGee at their new offices. Photo by