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

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

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

“One day, she finally asked me what was wrong. I finally decided to confide in her and tell her that I was being physically and sexually abused at home by my stepfather,” said Kagan told PEOPLE. “And it was hard… She said, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to come and stay with us.'”

“First, she wanted to know how long I’d been going through this. I said to her, ‘Are you sure your mom is going to be okay with this?’ And she said, “I’m sure.” She then called her mother (Shyamala Gopalan), and then her mother said, “Yes, she can come home, she can come and stay with us,” said Kagan. “And I went home with them – actually, that day; I came straight from school.”

As Kagan shares, Harris opened her doors to her during their senior year of high school in 1981, when she and her mother “welcomed” her into their family. She stayed with Harris for a few months during their final year of school together, which Kagan said offered her a “sense of security” during a difficult time.

At this point, Kagan had been a victim of abuse for “a few years” and the situation was getting “worse.” Part of the abuse, she said, also meant she “wasn’t allowed to eat,” which Harris also seemed to understand when Kagan showed up to lunch empty-handed.

“(Kamala) always had these great lunches and I would say, ‘Oh, your lunches are so good.’ And so, I guess, she realized that,” Kagan says. “She started saying, ‘Oh, I made this for you today. I bought this sandwich today.’ And then she started bringing me lunch.

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

Harris also shared her story on X (formerly Twitter) last October, when she revealed that helping her friend was “one of the reasons I wanted to become a prosecutor.” The vice president told Kagan the same thing when the two reconnected years later.

They had lost contact sometime after Harris left for Howard University in the 1980s. Kagan — who by 2005 had a family and a successful career in health care — says a mutual friend called her that year to inform him that Harris was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Showwhile he was district attorney of San Francisco.

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

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

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“Sometimes I still can’t believe it,” Kagan remarks of their phone call, noting that their catch-up felt like “time had stopped.”

“She then told me how much I had affected her life and what she had become,” Kagan says. I was like, “Whoa, I’m trying to find You to thank you for intervening at the most crucial moment of my life, and thank you Me for clarifying the direction you want to take for your future and fighting for women and children who have been mistreated! » ”

The two reminisced about everything that happened in the years that followed, with Harris telling Kagan that she pursued her studies in the legal field “’because of what I went through with you; by helping you and defending your interests.

“’It changed something in me,’” Kagan recalled Harris telling him.

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

“(Kamala) has always been this fighter…fighting for what she believes in,” Kagan says. “And when she told me at the time. It wasn’t just like I imagined her as a lawyer, creating these different units and protecting children and women and child victims of abuse But it really took me back to that time.

“She didn’t just say, ‘Oh, come stay with me and let’s all go to the movies and do this, let’s do that’… She really stood up 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 more than 170 languages.