Wanda Kagan tells PEOPLE she credits Harris with “intervening at the most important point in my life” — an experience that also set the Democratic presidential candidate on her professional path.

Kamala HarrisHer high school best friend reflects on how the now vice president “changed the entire trajectory of my future” and gave her a place to stay when she needed it.

Wanda Kagan, who attended Montreal’s Westmount High School with Harris before graduating in 1981, befriended the current presidential candidate when they were teenagers. The pair “spend a lot of time together” at school, participated in various activities and even went to prom as a group with other friends – which she says was Harris’ idea after not all of their friends had dates lined up.

One day, as Kagan recalls to PEOPLE, Harris noticed that “I wasn’t myself.”

“Finally, one day she asked me what was wrong. Finally, I decided to confide in her and tell her that I was being physically and sexually abused at home by my stepfather” , Kagan tells PEOPLE. “And it was difficult … She said, ‘Well, you’ll just have to come and stay with us.’

“First of all, he wanted to know how long I had been going through this. I was like, “Are you sure your mom is going to be okay with this?” And she said, “I’m sure.” Then she called her mom (Shyamala Gopalan), and then her mom said, ‘Yeah, she can come home, she can stay with us,'” Kagan says. “And I went home with them, actually, that day; I came straight from school”.

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As Kagan tells it, Harris opened his doors to her during the pair’s senior year of high school in 1981, when she and her mother “welcomed” her into their family. She stayed with Harris for several months during their senior year of school together, which Kagan says gave her “a sense of security” during a difficult time.

By that point, Kagan had been dealing with abuse for “several years” and it was “getting worse.” Part of the abuse, she says, also meant she “didn’t get to eat,” something Harris seemed to understand when Kagan showed up at lunch empty-handed.

“(Kamala) always had these great lunches and I’d say, ‘Oh, your lunches are so good.’ And so, I think, she understood that,” Kagan says. “She started saying, ‘Oh, I did this to you today. I bought this sandwich today.” And so he started bringing me lunch.”

That kindness is instinctive for Harris, Kagan says. She calls the Democratic presidential candidate an “empathetic person” with “natural protective instincts.”

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Harris also shared his story X (formerly Twitter) in October, when he revealed that helping his girlfriend was “one of the reasons I wanted to become a prosecutor.” The vice president said the same thing to Kagan when the pair reconnected years later.

They lost touch sometime after Harris left for Howard University in the 1980s, Kagan — who by 2005 had a family and a successful career in the health care industry — says a mutual friend called her that year to inform you that Harris appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Showwhile serving as District Attorney for San Francisco.

Kagan was “totally shocked,” found contact information for Harris’ office and left a message, before her daughter came to inform her that her “friend from Oprah” he calls.

“I remember picking up the phone and going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you called me back. You have to have a million people calling you,’” Kagan tells PEOPLE of their first conversation in 20 years. “And then she said to me, ‘Well, you’re not just anyone.’ “

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“I still sometimes can’t believe it,” Kagan remarked of their phone call, noting that it felt like “time stopped.”

“She kept telling me how much I had affected her life and what she had become,” says Kagan. I was like, “Wow, I’m trying to find you to thank you for intervening in the most important point in my life and thank you I for giving you clarity on the direction you wanted to go for your future and for fighting for women and children who were abused! “

The two reminisced about everything that happened in the years since, Harris telling Kagan that he went into the legal field “’cause of what I went through with you; to help and support you’. “

“‘Something changed inside of me,'” Kagan recalled Harris telling her.

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Reconnecting with her high school friend reminded Kagan that Harris “is really the same person.”

“(Kamala) has always been this fighter … who fights for what she believes in,” Kagan says. “And when she told me at the time. It wasn’t just like I imagine her as a lawyer running, setting up these different units and protecting children and women and children from sexual abuse. But it really brought me back to that time.”

“She didn’t just say, ‘Oh, come sit with me and let’s all go to the movies and let’s do this, let’s do that’ … She really advocated for me,” Kagan notes. “And she has such a powerful voice.”

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453 or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in over 170 languages.