I was only briefly a ham decades ago, so I could be remembering wrong. but isn't it a thing to relay even non emergency messages for a third party as long as it's not commercial? I remember getting a postcard where the message content was from a ham I had talked to, but the postcard itself was sent by someone closer that he relayed the message to. I though it was a common novelty/courtesy thing from back when long distance phone calling was a bigger deal.