The Staff of 36

there is almost nothing this group of concierges, engineers, package-room workers, managers, and doormen won’t do for the residents. Many can recall a litany of routine services (drop- ping off cold medicine from CVS without being asked) but also a handful of more extreme ones (driving out to Long Island to drop off a resident’s medication, also without being asked). Head concierge Caryl Hock, who has worked at Olympic Tower since 1983, says, “They trust you with all kinds of things. I’ve been asked to open somebody’s safe and get their jewelry out.” In her decades at the building, Hock has spent entire nights lugging truckloads of Khashoggi’s luggage up to his apartment, taken Cornelia Guest’s photo with Andy Warhol on their way to Studio 54, and even babysat one resident’s beloved King Charles spaniel, which liked to sit on a person’s head as they slept. Another time, says Hock, a businessman resident “took up with a woman, and after he left the apartment, he called me from Europe and said, ‘I need to get this woman out of my apartment.’ This was not an easy thing because she had her suitcases up there; he left the woman in his apartment, carte blanche. He told me all the paintings that were in there. He said, ‘I want you to count them, and I want you to check around and see if she’s trying to take anything.’ Sure enough, I did look in her sneakers, and she had a ring in there. He was so happy. He took care of me.”