Probably because I would assume that the airline had this handled without issue. The airline has all the contact info they need to the person, added their own digital tags tying the signature to the same person they have the contact info for, and scanned them going out and into each airport. That they don’t have that just as an automated system informing passengers their bag status alone is weird, let alone someone stepping in to do it in this situation.
This woman is super sweet and great, but what’s absolutely mind boggling about this story is that the airlines dropped the ball by such astronomical amounts.