She has a thing for cream cheese and long walks in the park. Like many New Yorkers, she is well-fed, well-groomed and well-medicated (for her thyroid and kidney troubles). At age 8, she has already been the star of a national advertising campaign and the subject of at least one messy lawsuit.
She has spent most of her days in pampered luxury in a penthouse apartment. A hotel pianist once wrote a tune for her. A hotel chef cooked her meals, and a housekeeper served them, hand-feeding her steamed carrots and other vegetables with grilled chicken.
Some people had to watch what they said around her. They didn’t want to offend her owner and best friend, Leona Helmsley — by calling her, of all things, a dog.
“Nobody could say ‘the dog,'” said Zamfira Sfara, 48, a former housekeeper for Helmsley, who Sfara said preferred a more regal term for her beloved pet: Princess.
She is New York’s richest, most talked-about and most controversial dog. Helmsley, the hotel magnate who died last month at age 87, showed her enduring love for her dog, named Trouble, by leaving the Maltese $12million in her will.
Much of what is publicly known about Trouble comes from Sfara, who worked for Helmsley for three months and sued her after she said she was bitten by the dog.
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Trouble’s whereabouts remain unknown. Helmsley’s longtime spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, declined to comment.
Trouble, despite her size, seemed to earn the name.
Sfara said Trouble bit her dozens of times during the brief period she worked for Helmsley in 2004. Sfara said Trouble had also bitten Helmsley’s bodyguards, a dog groomer, a nurse and at least one hotel guest.
“Trouble didn’t let people get close to her,” Sfara said of Helmsley. “She says, ‘She’s my first bodyguard.'”
Sfara sued her former boss over one of the dog bites. In 2005, a judge dismissed the case, agreeing with Helmsley’s lawyers that she was insulated from liability under the workers’ compensation law. Sfara said she still suffers pain from the bites.
Like any New Yorker who has come into a ton of money, Trouble is going to need expert legal representation. Sfara’s son, Remus Pop, 27, said they are talking to a law firm about taking up their case again and going after Trouble’s inheritance. “That is the next step,” Pop said. “That dog got money. That money is going to be taken away from that dog.”