Did I meet AOC During her Rooseveltian Moment?

Similar to President Roosevelt, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had her own life changing experience in North Dakota that set her on the road to office. Photo Courtesy Library of Congress.

As the librarian at Sitting Bull College for eighteen years, I met many interesting people. The library is one of the few places that outsiders can visit in a place so extremely rural that there are not many places where an outsider can stop. Before Google Maps and smartphones made navigation a no-brainer, I made sure to get a library sign put up on highway 1806. I always stocked a supply of brochures and maps to orient visitors and travelers from all corners of the globe. Standing Rock, because of its history and culture, has always attracted a diverse group of visitors. Some would come, look around and leave, while others would linger to use the computer, books, or space to stay warm. The most interesting were those who lingered for days, weeks, or months and used the library as a sort of base, but that is another story.
In the fall of 2016, during the pipeline protest, as thousands of people flocked to the place to be at that moment in time, we were overrun. There were days that all my staff and I did was orient lost visitors trying to find their way. I would pull out a paper map and explain where they were and how to get around. Luckily, I found a large box of 2014 North Dakota maps left over in a closet. North Dakota geography doesn't change that much in fifty years, let alone two.
So many people came through certain days that my library workers and I felt more like a help desk than a library. One day, a group came in that blurred into the mass until much later. I remember a young woman bundled up in a hat and thick fall clothing. I remember the friendly smile and the big brown eyes. Later, those distinctive eyes were what made me wonder; had it been her? Had she not been so bundled up, it might be easier for me to remember definitively.
I remember that the young woman and a few others were being guided by someone I knew from the local area, but I can't remember who it was. All I remember about our conversation was New York and the eyes. Places stuck in my mind because people arrived from every corner of the globe. Like many others, I gave them the ten-cent tour of the library and wished them well. Like so many others, I possibly unfolded a map and oriented them to the local geography. It wasn't until later that I wondered if I had given the young populist Alexandria Occasio-Cortez a tour of the library. It may have been her; it may have been someone else, I will never know. At the time of her visit, she was just another individual out of the thousands that came and not the well known politician who rocketed to prominence in the ensuing years.
AOC credits her visit to Standing Rock as being the key to her deciding to run for office. For her, I think it was a sort of Rooseveltian moment, similar to the one our president had in the 1880s. Roosevelt is often quoted as writing: "I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota." Like her fellow New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt, she stepped onto the national stage once she returned from North Dakota.