Good Samaritan makes over 600 trips to the grocery store for seniors in his community during coronavirus pandemic
Dailey has kept himself busy delivering far more than newspapers. He's become a lifeline for senior citizens who have been scared or unable to leave the house due to Covid-19.
Video Transcript
GREG DAILEY: These communities are filled with people that you and I should be thanking every day. This last three months has changed my life. I mean, I get-- I get emotional because some of them have become really special to me.
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I own a picture frame shop in Chatham, New Jersey, which was shut down because of the pandemic on March 21. Also, I've been delivering newspapers for 25 years. Started the day before my daughter was born, you know, for a little extra money, and here I am 25 years later still doing it.
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The shopping and delivering groceries started with a phone call I received from one of my newspaper customers. Mrs. Ross called me on the Wednesday prior to my store shutting down and asked if I would throw the newspaper closer to her house. A couple of days later, I was standing in a grocery store, and I called her and asked if she needed anything from the grocery store. And she was blown away. She, you know, of course, took me up on it.
And moments later, she called me back and asked if I wouldn't mind grabbing something for Mrs. Miller across the street. And the next day, I just decided, you know what, if there's two people that live within 100 feet of each other having issues getting the essential things they need, I'm going to put out a note. So I-- I put out a note to all 800 customers. That was on a Saturday the 21st, the day my business closed.
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The-- the biggest struggle for me is I never went grocery shopping before this. And when I say never, I mean never. We receive the orders in different manners, some via email, some right over the phone. A lot of them I wind up just taking off people's glass doors or in their mailboxes because they can't use email.
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I had someone else ask me, why, why are you doing-- you don't even know these people. And until you're there and realize that there is a level of desperation for some of them, and you can tell by the amount of gratitude, it's amazing.
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It has touched not just the people that I'm-- I'm helping, it's so far beyond the community. You know, I had a church out in Phoenix send me a check for $300, which I went and handed out $50 bills to the workers at the supermarkets that I shop at. I tell my kids, that's not my money. So I was able to take that money and brighten up someone else's day. I went and bought 20 bundles of tulips and gave them out to some of the seniors for Mother's Day. There was a tulip farm in town that was struggling, so I went and killed two birds with one stone. Go out and support a local business, and be able to pass out flowers. You think-- you would think I was handing out a billion dollars.
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I have to continue to do this. There is no way you can stop. I'm going to be the-- the regional director of operations in New Jersey for this nonprofit called Love a Senior, which is going to give me the ability to do so much more than shop and deliver groceries to seniors who need it. It's moments like this where we need to step back and take stock in ourselves and realize that we can do more. Something I've always told my kids, that there's so much more to life than just your mirror, and it's something I live by. If you have the opportunity to do something nice for someone, just do it.
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