Indra B. Tamang, who grew up in a mud house in a farming village in Nepal, has reached a pinnacle of society after more than three decades of loyal service as a butler, cook and caretaker to a socially prominent American family.

The cook became the master—as the inheritor of two apartments at the Dakota, the legendary West Side apartment building, and a valuable collection of Russian surrealist art—after the death last year at the age of 98 of Ruth Ford, a film and stage actress who was the wife of Zachary Scott, a dashing...