UDC Law School student Amy Currotto takes a selfie with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders after he warned her of oncoming traffic near Union Station. (Photo courtesy of Amy Currotto)

Amy Currotto was crossing the street at a crosswalk en route to her banjo and guitar lesson at Music on the Hill on Wednesday afternoon when she heard someone yelling, “Ma’am, ma’am, ma’am!”

“I guess I was not 100 percent paying attention,” Currotto tells DCist of the incident. She says she turned to see who was alerting her to the oncoming traffic. “It was Bernie Sanders. I was in shock and he was like, ‘Ma’am, get off the street.'”

She says she was “kind of embarrassed at first, but he ended up being really nice.” The Vermont senator was alone.

The incident occurred on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 3rd Street NE, between the Senate offices and Music on the Hill, an often-congested part of town. “It’s in a very strange part of D.C. where there are different intersections coming,” Currotto says. “It’s kind of just a confusing area.”

Currotto, a student at the University of the District of Columbia law school who gets around in a wheelchair, interned on Capitol Hill two summers ago, and “really, really wanted to meet” Sanders then.

“It’s wild I got to meet him on a street corner,” she says. “In D.C. it’s kind of crazy—you see these people on CNN all the time and then you see them on the street corner.”

While she calls it a “pretty quick exchange,” she says he was “very kind to me in those moments.” Currotto wants to pursue a career in international law and politics, though she didn’t have the chance to mention that to Sanders during their conversation.

Currotto took a photo of herself with the Vermont senator and 2016 presidential candidate on Facebook with the caption “BERNIE SANDERS I KID YOU NOT STOPPED ME FROM GETTING HIT BY A CAR ON MY WAY TO MY GUITAR LESSON SO WE TOOK A SELFIE TOGETHER. ( he is also much taller than me so awkward picture )”

In less than 24 hours, the post has gotten about 6,000 likes and 3,000 shares. “I had zero idea this would gain any kind of attention whatsoever,” Currotto says.

A representative of Sanders’ Senate office confirms that this exchange occurred, though noted that if staffers hadn’t seen it on social media, they never would have learned about it, because Sanders didn’t tell them. He doesn’t view it as a big deal.

Currotto says that her main modes of transportation in D.C. are Metro and “just wheeling.”

“D.C. is actually pretty accessible,” she says. “But I’m also just very, very mobile.”

Indeed, after a Thursday filled with law school classes, she is headed to perform in the Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s opening night showing of “Trial by Jury.”