An Ottawa woman is hoping to find the man she says paid for her to take a cab ride home when she became lost in a snowstorm last week.

Charlotte McCarthy is 75 and prides herself on her independence. But last Wednesday, she got confused and agitated when she went out to a nearby shopping centre for groceries and got caught in the snowstorm that hit the city.

Just after 4 p.m., McCarthy called for a pick-up from Para Transpo, Ottawa’s public transit system for those with mobility issues. But the storm was causing buses to be delayed.

After waiting several hours and trying unsuccessfully to reach Para Transpo by phone, McCarthy decided to take a bus. But by now it was dark and stormier and she wasn't familiar with where to catch her bus.

“I was confused, disoriented, scared -- scared out of my mind,” she told CTV Ottawa, “not knowing how I was going to get home.”

Loaded down with her groceries, McCarthy made her way to one side of the mall’s transit hub only to be told she was on the wrong side. She crossed over, only to be told the same thing.

“They said, ‘Oh, no, you've got to go across.’ When they said that, I lost it. I completely lost it,” McCarthy recalls, growing emotional at the memory.

That’s when a man at the bus stop pulled out his cellphone and started to call a taxi for her.

“When I heard him calling Blueline (taxi company), I said, ‘I can't pay.’ And he says, ‘Not to worry, not to worry, I’m going to take care of you’.”

The man brought McCarthy over to a nearby coffee shop and bought her a coffee while they waited for the cab, then ran to a bank machine get her cash to pay for her trip home. McCarthy says she was stunned by his kindness.

“Unbelievable,” she says, “He is my guardian angel.”

McCarthy doesn’t remember much about her angel, though. She says he told her he was Lebanese and went by the name Aston. She remembers he had a full beard, was in his 30s, and that he was married.

She says the man called her that evening when she got home to make sure she was all right, but she says she forgot to get his number.

McCarthy would like to see her Aston, to thank him one more time.

“I would like to say to him. ‘I love you, you're my guardian angel,’ and give him biggest hug I could possibly give him.”

With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Joanne Schnurr