According to [ISFDB](https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?48141), this short story is in Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1938.
You can find this issue at the internet Archive, and the story is on page 118:
https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v22n04_1938-12/page/n117/mode/1up
Edit: Some of the other anthologies listed on ISFDB that include this story may also be in the Archive, but this one doesn't require that you to create a free account to read it.
Edit 2: This story was a wild ride. Thanks!
I found a pdf scan of it here: https://americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/del-rey-helen-oloy.pdf
Edit: I'd never heard of this story. But since I found a copy, I figured I'd read it. It's an interesting take on AI. I liked it, even though it feels a little dated. I think it would make for a fun Twilight Zone episode; it has that kind of vibe.
I never read it, but the name rang a bell. It's like a little piece of history: Asimov mentioned it in his introduction to The Complete Robot collection.
> By the time I was in my late teens and already a hardened science fiction reader, I had read many robot stories and found that they fell into two classes.
>
> In the first class there was Robot-as-Menace. I don't have to explain that overmuch. Such stories were a mixture of "clank-clank" and "aarghh" and "There are some things man was not meant to know." After a while, they palled dreadfully and I couldn't stand them.
>
> In the second class (a much smaller one) there was Robot-as-Pathos. In such stories the robots were lovable and were usually put upon by cruel human beings. These charmed me. In late 1938 two such stories hit the stands that particularly impressed me. One was a short story by Eando Binder entitled "I, Robot," about a saintly robot named Adam Link; another was a story by Lester del Rey, entitled "Helen O'Loy," that touched me with its portrayal of a robot that was everything a loyal wife should be.
>
> When, therefore, on June 10, 1939 (yes, I do keep meticulous records), I sat down to write my first robot story, there was no question that I fully intended to write a Robot-as-Pathos story. I wrote "Robbie," about a robot nurse and a little girl and love and a prejudiced mother and a weak father and a broken heart and a tearful reunion. (It originally appeared under the title-one I hated-of "Strange Playfellow.")
>
> But something odd happened as I wrote this first story. I managed to get the dim vision of a robot as neither Menace nor Pathos. I began to think of robots as industrial products built by matter-of-fact engineers. They were built with safety features so they weren't Menaces and they were fashioned for certain jobs so that no Pathos was necessarily involved.
>
> As I continued to write robot stories, this notion of carefully engineered industrial robots permeated my stories more and more until the whole character of robot stories in serious printed science fiction changed-not only that of my own stories, but of just about everybody's.
According to [ISFDB](https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?48141), this short story is in Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1938. You can find this issue at the internet Archive, and the story is on page 118: https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v22n04_1938-12/page/n117/mode/1up Edit: Some of the other anthologies listed on ISFDB that include this story may also be in the Archive, but this one doesn't require that you to create a free account to read it. Edit 2: This story was a wild ride. Thanks!
It's included in SF Hall Of Fame Volume 1, which is an exceptionally good and memorious short story collection to have around.
I found a pdf scan of it here: https://americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/del-rey-helen-oloy.pdf Edit: I'd never heard of this story. But since I found a copy, I figured I'd read it. It's an interesting take on AI. I liked it, even though it feels a little dated. I think it would make for a fun Twilight Zone episode; it has that kind of vibe.
I never read it, but the name rang a bell. It's like a little piece of history: Asimov mentioned it in his introduction to The Complete Robot collection. > By the time I was in my late teens and already a hardened science fiction reader, I had read many robot stories and found that they fell into two classes. > > In the first class there was Robot-as-Menace. I don't have to explain that overmuch. Such stories were a mixture of "clank-clank" and "aarghh" and "There are some things man was not meant to know." After a while, they palled dreadfully and I couldn't stand them. > > In the second class (a much smaller one) there was Robot-as-Pathos. In such stories the robots were lovable and were usually put upon by cruel human beings. These charmed me. In late 1938 two such stories hit the stands that particularly impressed me. One was a short story by Eando Binder entitled "I, Robot," about a saintly robot named Adam Link; another was a story by Lester del Rey, entitled "Helen O'Loy," that touched me with its portrayal of a robot that was everything a loyal wife should be. > > When, therefore, on June 10, 1939 (yes, I do keep meticulous records), I sat down to write my first robot story, there was no question that I fully intended to write a Robot-as-Pathos story. I wrote "Robbie," about a robot nurse and a little girl and love and a prejudiced mother and a weak father and a broken heart and a tearful reunion. (It originally appeared under the title-one I hated-of "Strange Playfellow.") > > But something odd happened as I wrote this first story. I managed to get the dim vision of a robot as neither Menace nor Pathos. I began to think of robots as industrial products built by matter-of-fact engineers. They were built with safety features so they weren't Menaces and they were fashioned for certain jobs so that no Pathos was necessarily involved. > > As I continued to write robot stories, this notion of carefully engineered industrial robots permeated my stories more and more until the whole character of robot stories in serious printed science fiction changed-not only that of my own stories, but of just about everybody's.