...so much so, that she hopped a plane at considerable time and expense to try and verify the thing. Wasted time & money & she was made to look like a fool in the eyes of many. Maybe not you.
If someone handed you an image of something that might be what you had been seeking for years, what expense would you forego to investigate it, verify it, to find out if it was real?
Flying there to find out was perfectly logical, imho. Otherwise, it takes yet another layer of trust to have someone else do that.
Some things you just have to do yourself.
Trying to find the records elsewhere is a valid quest, one that might confirm the existence of the document in the image or produce evidence it was fake.
Ohterwise, she could have been accused of ignoring it, and that dog wouldn't hunt, either.
Sometimes you have to spend the money to prove something won't work so you are not accused of failing to do everything you could to find something that would.