This all started with a newspaper that landed a few feet shy of its intended target. Greg Dailey has delivered several newspapers in Mercer County for almost a quarter century, and while he does his best to get them where his customers want, his right arm is shot from years of heaving them out of his car window.

“The reality is, it’s tough for me to throw it that far,” he explained to the 88-year-old woman on the other end of the phone. She wanted her paper tucked against the garage of her East Windsor home because, as she explained to him last week, she isn’t willing to walk down the driveway to pick it up.

And that’s when it hit Dailey like a rolled-up Star-Ledger to the forehead. This woman is afraid to walk even a few steps out of her home. How in the world, with the coronavirus crisis leaving many seniors afraid to even open the door to their homes, was she getting groceries? He called her back.

“I’m at the ShopRite,” he said. “Do you need anything?”

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That was the how Greg Dailey, newspaper man, became Greg Dailey, grocery deliverer. That was how a man who usually passes quickly through the lives of the 725 customers on his paper route became a surprising lifesaver for many of them. This woman gave him her shopping list, and at the end of the conversation, had one request:

“Can you pick up something for Mrs. Miller across the street?”

Dailey figured, if he was going to help two people on his route, why not extend the offer to everyone? He put this note in every newspaper he delivered the next day:

My name is Greg Dailey and I deliver your newspaper every morning. I understand during these trying times it is difficult for some to get out of their house to get everyday necessities. I would like to offer my services free of charge to anyone who needs groceries, household products, etc. I will be shopping at ShopRite and McCaffery’s and can deliver the goods directly to your front door.

He left his number and email address. The response was immediate, and not just with more requests for his new service. Oh, there were plenty of those -- nine of them, in fact, on the first day alone. But there were more emails from people who wanted to help the man who had offered his help.

They wanted to send him gas money for his Ford Focus. They offered to leave him food on their doorsteps to his family. Mostly, though, they just wanted to say thank you.

“I know you only by the sound of your car in the morning and your good service, but your offer to help in our community is a step beyond,” one customer wrote back to him. “If you hear a little extra sound when you fly past (our house), it will be us applauding and cheering for a good man.”

This is a crisis unlike any we have experienced in New Jersey. After a hurricane, we can organize food drives or help our neighbors who were hit the hardest rebuild their homes. After 9/11, we could gather for vigils and offer moral support.

This time, though, we’ve been told that the best way to help is to stay in our houses. But that doesn’t erase the basic needs that people have.

Dailey is doing his part to fill them. His primary business, a framing store called Frames on Main that he and partner Randy Dembo own in Chatham, had to close as a non-essential business during the lockdown. He has plenty of time once he was done with his two-hour newspaper routine that begins at 4 a.m. every morning. Why not help?

“Times are tough. Some of us should not be out of the house at all,” Dailey said. “They need produce. They need medicine. They need toiletries. I told one of the gentlemen, ‘I can stop at the liquor store if you want. His eyes went wide.’”

His service has become a family affair, with his wife Cherlyn, his three kids -- Erin, Sean and Brian -- and his mother-in-law Carol Krohn all involved. They used a Google document to keep the groceries organized, with every item highlighted on a receipt. They sort the items into separate bags in their dining room, and for safety, everything is cleaned with disinfectant wipes. Customers reimburse for the items, but there’s no charge for the shopping and delivery.

“It was a blessing, I’ll tell you that," said Ross Contiliano, a 77-year-old customer on his route. He and his wife, Linda, needed milk, eggs and vegetables. “We were worried about how we were going to get food. The service he provided for us was a godsend.”

Contiliano used to be Dailey’s baseball coach 35 years ago. Helping him, Dailey said, is a small way to pay him back for those years of guidance. But he doesn’t have that kind of connection to most of the people he is helping. Some of them aren’t even on his paper route.

Dailey doesn’t care. “We are at the very beginning of this,” he said. “It’s going to be months. We are going to do everything we can to help people get through it. It’s only been 24 hours, and the response has been overwhelming.”

The customers on his newspaper route can count on him. At a time when every community needs people to step up and help the people who need it the most, he delivers.

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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.