Usually, when he’s out for a walk in Rasmussen Park, Louie King takes the other route, the route that goes nowhere near the slough.

Luckily, for an elderly woman who went missing the night before, King and two young friends took the path less traveled. In doing so, they may have made all the difference in the world for the woman.

“She was in tough shape,” King said of his afternoon discovery last Saturday. “I don’t know if she’d have survived out there much longer.”

The woman’s story actually began the night before. At 10:41 p.m. Aug. 29 a missing person report was filed with Mankato police. An 82-year-old woman who suffers from memory loss had wandered away from nearby Laurel’s Edge Assisted Living.

Authorities searched but were unable to find her.

King and two young companions went for their walk the next day. The children — who are ages 7 and 2 and belong to some friends of King’s family — refer to King as “Grandpa.”

“As we were walking along, we heard something out in the slough,” King said. “Looking out there, all I could see was a white head. Then Alex (the 7-year-old) says, ‘Grandpa, is that a wizard?’”

King walked about 100 feet into the slough and picked up the woman, carrying her up to the trail. He said she’d been mumbling something about an elevator. Her arms were scraped up a bit and she was still bleeding.

He didn’t want to leave her alone, but he needed to get to a phone.

So King left Alex with the woman while he and the 2-year-old went for help — “I didn’t want to leave her alone,” King said.

King climbed a hill to a house owned by photographer Gregg Anderson, where authorities were summoned.

When King arrived back to the woman and Alex, he asked if the woman had said anything.

“Alex said she had taught at the college,” King said. “He’d been talking to her, and she said she had taught his mother at the college.”

Alex was very proud.

“He was told he was a hero,” King said, “and I think he was.”