A 35-year homeless man who spat at and yelled racist insults at a 22-year-old Portland State University graduate and her parents who were visiting from India was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison Thursday.

The judge also ordered Steven Joseph Klopp to write a letter of apology to the woman and her parents.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht sentenced Klopp to three years of probation for the confrontation, but he will head to prison because the June 15 attack violated his probation for an earlier crime -- throwing a garbage can at a TriMet bus in September 2016.

The young woman told police that she grew up in India and came to the United States for college, and her parents were in town to celebrate her college graduation. Klopp approached them while they were riding the MAX train through downtown about 12:30 a.m.

The woman said Klopp started telling them that they needed to get out of the United States. He spat at them and some landed on the chest of the woman’s mother.

Last month, Klopp pleaded guilty to second-degree intimidation -- and acknowledged that he targeted another person because of that person’s “race, color or national origin.”

Steven Klopp (wearing a blue jail uniform) pleaded guilty to second-degree intimidation in Multnomah County Circuit Court in September.

Klopp said Thursday that the description of the MAX encounter was blown out of proportion.

Deputy District Attorney Amity Girt said the woman’s parents don’t speak English, and being spit at and yelled at by a stranger was terrifying for them -- especially knowing this is the city their daughter lives in.

“It’s quite unfortunate to hear this is how her parents were welcomed to Portland, Oregon,” Girt told the judge during the plea hearing in September.

But Girt said the young woman majored in psychology and she believes Klopp could benefit from mental health help. He will be supervised by a probation officer who specializes in people with mental illness.

Klopp’s mother earlier told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Klopp has schizoaffective disorder and became homeless after neglecting to take his medication.

The young woman targeted by Klopp told The Oregonian/OregonLive after the confrontation that she worried that Klopp could have a weapon. A few other people were on the downtown MAX train that night, but none of them intervened, she said. She called 911, notified the MAX operator and stood between Klopp and her mother. Klopp left the train as she summoned help.

Fresh on her mind, she said, was the attack about three weeks earlier on a MAX train at the Hollywood Transit Station that left two passengers dead. Police say Jeremy Christian yelled xenophobic slurs at two teenage girls, one of them wearing a hijab, before stabbing three people who came to their defense.

-- Aimee Green