Julia Price was on her afternoon run when she heard an older man catcalling her loud enough that it drowned out her headphones. The man, who was well-dressed and seemed to be on his lunch break from an office job, was yelling, “Sexy lady, hey hey sexy lady!” to get the Santa Monica musician’s attention.

“He kept screaming it, and I decided to just ignore him and keep running,” Price posted on her Facebook page on Nov. 18. “This ignoring seemed to piss him off so he lashed out and said, ‘Eff you, dumb b—h!’”

STORY: I Confronted Every Guy Who Catcalled Me (And It Didn’t Go Well)

Price added: “That was my trigger point. The B word. I ripped off my headphones, prepared to stand up for myself when this little boy who was walking alongside his mother and little sister in a stroller looked at the guy and said, ‘Hey. That is not nice to say to her and she didn’t like you yelling at her. You shouldn’t do that because she is a nice girl and I don’t let anyone say mean things to people. She’s a girl like my sister and I will protect her.'”

The catcalling man became embarrassed and he grabbed his lunch to leave. Price asked the mom of the little boy, James, if she could give him a hug. “I told him how grateful I was for him,” Price said. “He just shrugged and said, ‘Well, I just wanted to make sure your heart was okay.’"

Apparently, this is typical for the stand-up little boy, according to his mother. Price was so touched by how James defended her that she decided to share the story, which has since gone viral, with more than 160,000 shares and over 950,000 likes on Facebook.

STORY: Two Words You Can Stop Forcing Your Kid To Say

“I’m very passionate about standing up to catcalling as I spent years in New York City where it was sometimes so bad that it became exhausting just to walk outside,” Price told MTV News. “So to have (for the first time in my life) someone actually stand up to a catcaller on my behalf, let alone a child, I was beyond moved. I was dying to share it with my friends on Facebook and Instagram to help them find inspiration from it, but had no idea it would reach so many people, and I feel like James symbolizes hope for so many now.”

(Photo: Julia Price)

Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com.