Jim Albright figured he was just turning off the valve to a broken water pipe.

The sound of running water caught Albright’s attention near the end of his shift at Alcatraz. A fellow guard unlocked the dark utility corridor in Cell Block B so Albright could investigate. Albright spotted the spewing faucet, crawled across the top of the cell block, closed the valve, climbed down and went home.

The situation seemed mundane to Albright, with one exception.

Blankets — “those damn blankets,” as they came to be known — had been draped around the top of Cell Block B by an inmate assigned to paint and clean the area. The prisoner, Allen West, convinced an Alcatraz lieutenant the blankets were necessary to prevent paint splatter and dust from falling down to the cells below. In reality, the blankets shielded months of elaborate work by West and three other inmates to attempt the most infamous prison breakout in U.S. history. Albright and other officers complained the blankets breached security, and that West’s veiled activity posed a risk. They were overruled.

“Escape from Alcatraz” became a blockbuster Clint Eastwood movie.

But that moment in 1962 could’ve become a real-life drama for Albright when he climbed atop Cell Block B to shut off that busted pipe.

West and cohorts Frank Morris, John Anglin and his brother Clarence Anglin could likely have been working on their escape route, behind those blankets, when Albright accidentally interrupted them.

“Were they up there [hiding] when I was up there?” Albright wondered, again, last week. “I was lucky, ’cause I could’ve ended up dead. If I would’ve found them, or they found me, they would’ve killed me and gone out right then, because the jig would’ve been up.”