New Jersey newspaper carrier does double duty, delivering groceries free of charge to people along his route

A bag of groceries.
(Image credit: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

All 800 of Greg Dailey's customers received the same note stuffed in their newspaper: if they needed anything picked up from the grocery store, he was happy to do it for them, free of charge.

Dailey is a newspaper carrier, and delivers the Star-Ledger every morning to homes in central New Jersey. After New Jersey's governor told residents to stay at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, Dailey learned that one of his elderly customers was too afraid to even go outside to pick up the paper, and that got him thinking about others who might have difficulty navigating this new world. He typed up a note to customers offering his services, and soon the calls came flooding in.

Dailey's wife, children, and mother-in-law help him with taking orders and doing some of the shopping. When he's done delivering his papers for the day, Dailey hits the grocery store, then brings the items back to his house for disinfection before dropping them off. "This isn't something that we're just going to do for a few days — we're in this for the duration," he told The Washington Post.

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Sandy Driska thought his offer was too good to be true, but because she was overcoming bronchitis and her husband has Parkinson's disease, she decided to give Dailey a chance. He did exactly as promised, delivering her much-needed groceries without asking for an extra penny. "What a godsend this man has been," she said.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.