CEBU, Philippines - A woman who hails from Sapian, the smallest town in Capiz province, was mentioned in the book Empty Mansion as the Filipina-American nurse who inherited from her employer houses and cars worth $30 million and 30 million in cash.
The forthcoming book, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and NBC Universal investigative reporter Bill Dedman with Paul Clark Newell Jr., identified the Capizeña nurse as Gicela Oloroso, whose father was the former town mayor of Sapian in the late 1960s.
The identity of 58-year-old nurse (some reports claimed that she is already 63 years old) was unknown to almost all Capizeños as she had only been previously identified by her Jewish name, Hadassah Peri.
According to Sapian town Mayor Arthur John Biñas, Peri's fortune was not known in their town or even in Capiz province.
"I know the family but I don't know Mrs. Peri. My classmate is her cousin. She told me a few years ago that her cousin, which happened to be Mrs. Peri, is taking care of a wealthy old woman. But the cousin apparently did not know of Peri's inheritance. She seemed shocked when she heard the news," Biñas said.
The mayor said Peri's immediately family members are now living abroad or staying somewhere in Metro Manila.
As early as 2011, several news agencies carried the story of Peri's windfall from famed New York copper-mining heiress Huguette Clark.
Reports said Peri emigrated to the US in 1972. Ten years later, the Roman Catholic-raised nurse converted to Orthodox Judaism after she met and married Daniel Peri, an Israeli immigrant and New York taxi driver.
In 1991, the agency, of which Oloroso worked for, assigned her to care for Clark. Apparently, she endeared herself to the heiress and became a "friend and loyal companion," according to the copper-mining heiress's will.
An online story of http://www.dailymail.co.uk on November 20, 211, stated that Peri tended Clark for 20 years where she earned $131,000. Peri worked for Clark 12 hours a day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year for 20 years.
The reclusive Clark died in June 2011 at the age of 104 with a $400-million fortune.
In his book, Dedman said that "when she (Peri) was assigned to Huguette, the Peris (Oloroso and husband) owned a small apartment in Brooklyn." But by the time of Clark's death, the Peris owned seven residences. Six of which were allegedly bought by Clark for them.
Peri, then a mother of three, also amassed properties to include two apartments at the Gatsby, a pre-war building on East 96th Street in Manhattan with views of Central Park. It was reported that the Peris also owned a 2001 Bentley Arnage sedan worth $204,000 and a Lincoln Navigator SUV worth $42,000.
Clark took care of taxes and monthly dues of Peris's properties, as she also shouldered school expenses of her three children. She also covered their medical bills and even their piano lessons, violin lessons and Hebrew lessons, as well as their basketball and summer camps in upstate New York, Dedman wrote. (FREEMAN)