Trooper gives a slow speed escort to senior on a scooter on a busy highway

What was first mistaken to be a slow-speed police pursuit was revealed to be a pursuit of kindness.

Drivers in Washington, near the Canada–United States border, saw what seemed to be a police pursuit of an elderly woman and started posting to social media.

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Video shows what appears to be police attempting to pull over an 80-year-old woman on a motorized scooter along State Route 546.

“What it looked like at the time was this older lady on a Rascal cruising down the road,” Andrea Ruth, whose office faces the highway, told Komo News. “The cop car with the lights flashing going behind her is what caught my attention.”

“You can’t make that stuff up.”

Troopers were then flooded with phone calls and inquiries regarding the situation. As it turned out, it wasn’t a police pursuit, but rather a cop being a Good Samaritan.

“I wasn’t trying to stop her. I wasn’t trying to detain her. I was just trying to get her back home,” highway patrolman Dave Hintz told the news network.

“I just treated her the way I would’ve wanted somebody to treat my mom.”

The woman, who’d gone out for coffee got lost trying to get home, reports Komo News. When Hintz found her, she was nearly four miles from her house and continuing to head in the wrong direction.

“We’re getting a ton of calls about you,” he told her, after asking her to pull over. “Everybody’s worried about you because you’ve been off and on the road.”

Although the woman swore she knew where she was going, Hintz insisted to help “get [her] out of here” and back home.

The journey took more than an hour, with the twosome heading down the state highway at nearly 6 km/h – the fastest that the scooter can go.

Hintz, who’s been with the State Patrol for 24 years, said that this was a first for him.

“This particular case took a little more patience and humility, but I wouldn’t have done it any differently.”