Danielle Jennings said when she worked at the Supreme Court in the early 2000s, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took an interest in her life. It took Jennings by surprise because Ginsburg moved so quietly.

“You’d turn around a corner to go to the bathroom and you wouldn’t even notice she’s behind you,” Jennings said. “She was like a ninja. But she very much cared about everybody.”

Jennings, 38, worked in different capacities with the Supreme Court for five years. She said her family maintained a close connection with Ginsburg. Jennings’ daughter Alyssa, 12, said Ginsburg always remembered her name.

“She always gave good hugs and good advice,” Alyssa said.

Ginsburg laid in repose Wednesday, her casket draped in an American flag under the portico of the U.S. Supreme Court. People poured in from across the country to pay their respects. For the D.C. region, she was not only an American icon. She was a 40-year resident, a meticulous, familiar, and revered part of the daily landscape.

D.C. native Ricky Roy, 59, sold $20 “Notorious RBG” t-shirts to passersby Wednesday. He said he worked at the Supreme Court for seven years operating elevators and cleaning offices, including that of the late Justice Ginsburg.

“Very neat, very neat, everything organized,” Roy remembered. “She didn’t like you in the office too much but when you did it was very neat and organized.”

Outside the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was a fixture in the city’s arts scene. In 2016, she wrote and performed a small speaking part on opening night of Washington National Opera’s production of the comic opera The Daughter of the Regiment. D.C. resident Tierra Butler and her sister bumped into Ginsburg while on their way to see the movie “Jackie” at E Street Cinema.

“We were running late for our movie and power walking through the lobby — I turned quickly to look for my sister and bumped up against her [Ginsburg]!” Butler told DCist/WAMU on Twitter. “She and her family just laughed. I could NOT stop apologizing and my sister had to tug me away.”

Butler remembered being unable to focus on the film as she stared at the justice, who giggled as she watched.

Payal Jhaveri, 44, of Alexandria, met Ginsburg and Ginsburg’s husband, Marty, in 2003 after a production of the play Nijinsky’s Last Dance.

“We shook hands, and I remember thinking how soft and delicate they were,” Jhaveri recalled.

Ginsburg’s progressive worldview extended to the D.C. Jewish community. She collaborated with local D.C. rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt of Adas Israel synagogue on a feminist reading of the Passover story. At the official memorial service for Ginsburg Wednesday, Holtzblatt credited her with helping women seize their potential, “whether that is to serve in the highest court in their land, or closer to home for me, as the rabbi of their community.”

For the region’s women and girls, Ginsburg exerted a magnetic pull.

Writer Lurdes Abruscato, 52, and her daughter Allison, 17, visited the Supreme Court together from Glenelg, Md. Allison wore a gray face mask printed with Ginsburg’s stylized portrait. Abruscato said she has been telling her daughter about not being able to own a credit card as a young woman.

“We both watched ‘RBG’ last night and the night before that we saw ‘On the Basis of Sex,’ just so that we were a little bit more up to speed,” Abruscato said. “She had a couple of questions for me, like is that how that was? Do you remember that?”

Melanie Horn, 28, works in a non-profit. She walked her dog Conley across the street from the Supreme Court and listed the ways Ginsburg had changed her life.

“I own in the city, so the fact that I can hold a mortgage without needing a man’s signature. My aunts came up and got married right after the equal marriage law passed,” Horn said. “Just being able to hold a job while pregnant and not get fired — it’s just everyday things that we don’t actively think about that she had to fight for.”

Ginsburg died at the end of a tumultuous summer in the region. Alexandria lobbyist Jennifer Imo and her daughter Olivia, 13, watched the crowd walk between velvet ropes below Ginsburg’s casket. Imo said she took her daughter to see Black Lives Matter Plaza, and only missed seeing the funeral of the late John Lewis because they were out of town.

Olivia said although the justice was 87, she resonated with teens. Recently, a friend of Olivia’s dressed up as Ginsburg for Halloween.

“She wore some of her outfits to school. She had some pearls or something like that and her hair up,” Olivia said. “I didn’t know about [Ginsburg] as much then, but as I got to know her I definitely thought that was nice for her to dress up.”

Above all, Ginsburg had a reputation for resilience. Jennings, the former Supreme Court employee, said she sometimes ran into Ginsburg in the court gym. She said the justice would encourage her — and sometimes teach exercise classes. Now a policy analyst, Jennings said she was thinking of Ginsburg’s ability to overcome adversity.

“Since she passed, I’ve definitely thought to be more … to push through more,” Jennings said. “We don’t like discomfort but only in discomfort do you get change. And she pushed through a lot of discomfort for our change.”