Kimberly and Casey

Kimberly Kay Pierce, born in Landsthul, Germany, calls herself an “army brat.” After the family moved to Denver, she remembers running up and down the halls at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center – and deciding right then and there she wanted to be a nurse just like her dad, Bill,

The family (she’s the oldest of four brothers and a sister) eventually settled near Moab, Utah, in tiny La Sal (recent population 270) nestled the spectacular La Sal Mountain range, where her dad was deputy sheriff. He once pulled her over and ticketed her for speeding in the new family van. When the judge, a family friend, asked him what her punishment should be, he suggested she mop the La Sal community center. She did.

“Every kid in La Sal was a 4H kid – that’s how you earned money for your school clothes.” She raised pigs. “They produce more meat –more money at auction.”

Kim graduated high school in Monticello, a 45-minute bus ride from home. Several years later she moved to Colorado and fulfilled her lifelong dream when she received her nursing degree from Colorado Mesa University. Dad also went back to school for a degree in psychology and became a therapist. He later taught Headstart.

Kim loves being a nurse, talking with patients, learning new things, exploring the world around her, improving her crafts, “playing” gardening, and being an advocate for animals and nature, a love she attributes to her mother, Loretta. “Mom even taught me to appreciate all sorts of garden bugs Everything but tomato worms. We had a sacrificial rock in the garden for those.”

Casey Michael Witt Leroux hails from Illinois, where (no joke) he attended Oscar Meyer Elementary School in Chicago and set a kind of school record for a fundraiser in which he was the first in the pool, the last out and swam and swam and swam until his parents had to negotiate their friends’ $1 per lap “donation” down to 10 cents, or just a flat five dollars. He’s not a quitter.

Casey’s late father, Charles Leroux, was a renowned Chicago Tribune journalist. His mother, Linda Witt, was a prizewinning editor, bureau chief for Time Inc., and later a nationally syndicated columnist for the Gannett newspapers and USA Today. Both he and his older sister Jamie moved to California in 1985 with her when, in their words “We married Jim.” They graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, where they both excelled on the ski team. Stepdad Jim Marsh (an Air Force veteran, Silicon Valley engineer and lastly director of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratory near Philadelphia) “is every bit a father to me,“ and helped them (and two exchange students who lived with the family) refine their skiing, survive adolescence and prove they had earned their new driver’s licenses by negotiating San Francisco’s notoriously steep, winding Lombard Street.

Even as a kid, Casey had a heart for helping others – he once took off his skis and walked a terrified little boy down the mountain. He began his health care career taking care of special needs children and adults in California and later Arizona. He moved to Colorado in 2014, continuing his career at West Springs Hospital, where he and Kim met taking care of psychiatric patients. He is now a program director, supervising 60% of the mental health worker.

Between them, Kim and Casey have six adult children, and love to round up as many as they can for family game nights, occasional trips to Denver for special events (the Broadway musical “Wicked” was a recent treat) and trips camping, hiking, fishing – anything involving nature and the great outdoors.

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