“[Ever] since I’ve been working at home, I’ve been biking around the city aimlessly. Last weekend, I found a grenade. This is the kinda thing that happens when you bike around all the time. I was on the news. I found [it] on Commercial and Venables near Uprising Bakery. I was just leaving and there was a grenade just sitting on the curb so I called the police. They showed up within 2 minutes and cordoned the whole thing off. CTV News came and interviewed me.

“It was scary. It looked real enough. It wasn’t a toy, you could tell. The police pulled up and one guy goes “Oh shit!” It was wild.

“I work for Legal Aid BC. I’m a paralegal on the Family Law Line. We help people who are separating and help with understanding what’s gonna happen with their kids, their finances. It's for low income families. We help them navigate them through getting back on their feet and starting over. One day is not the same as the next.

“I’ve been with Legal Aid since 2007, when I moved to Vancouver. I worked at the Courthouse for 6 years for a service called Family Duty Counsel. It’s lawyers who go to court and help you for free. I was [an] assistant there. The lead lawyer encouraged me to go to paralegal school. We wanted to help people more and do forms for them...more than give them advice and send them on their way. I went to paralegal school at night and eventually got certified. They created positions for paralegals with some extra funding and I got one.

“We never got that much followup [from clients], but sometimes we did. People would struggle with addiction or poverty and they would dig themselves into a hole where the child support doesn’t stop but they can’t pay it. So they would get clean and they would be faced with yet more hurdles. We’d help them resolve that. They would be really thankful. So it’s just nice to help people and [walk] them through these major issues.

“[My job has] taught me that I have reserves of patience that I didn’t know I have. It’s made me thankful for what I have, like my husband. I see so many people’s relationships break down that I’m happy that I have what I have and I don’t take that for granted.”

Read the CTV News report and watch Melissa’s televised interview on the grenade finding here.