At most airports, employees park a good distance from the terminals and ride a shuttle into work. RDU is smaller and may not have said shuttle service, but just thought I'd point that out. They are also more likely to ride the shuttle OUT to their car as well, which - if RDU has one - it doesn't make the timeline all that improbable.
I'm not an expert at much, but I fly into and out of RDU dozens of times a year and I am often racing to get to a meeting when I land, so I have become something of an RDU logistics and timing connoisseur.
Shuttles take FOREVER at RDU, even though it's a small airport. The road to Terminal 2 is one-way, so once you're picked up, you head away from the airport and then, if you're parked where most of the parking is (unless there is some location I'm not aware of)), you have to circle practically around the entire place. Even if you are parked closer to the area where the RDU offices and the cell phone lot and rental cars are located, it's not quick. Ubers take quite a while -- 10 minutes or so (even though the estimate always says 5 minutes) -- because of the way the road loops around the entire airport. When I use an Uber, I open the app at my gate as I get off the plane, plug the info in, and before I even get to the escalators near Starbucks (around the Delta sky club area), I hit the button to call the car, go up the escalator, past Starbucks, down the other escalator, make my way to "area 17" and still always wait for five minutes.
The timeline isn't totally impossible if she took a shuttle, and I guess there wouldn't be as much traffic at that time of day...but it wouldn't leave any time to dawdle. She would have had to take off from the Starbucks at a pretty good pace, it would have taken at least 2 minutes to get to the curb where there are pickups (includes crossing the inside loop near the door, which has passenger pick-up traffic) and to the outside curb. She would have to have gotten lucky and found a shuttle right there or there within a minute or two, been dropped close to her car or without having to walk more than a minute or two, and without delay, the car would have had to have been heading out of the lot. That's a lot for 10 minutes. Everything would had to align.
Now, if she was in the parking garage within walking distance (where most passengers park, or at least where this passenger parks) or on the surface lot near Terminal 1, ten minutes would be more doable. It's still sort of tight, though. I guess she wouldn't have been burdened with a rollaboard and a "personal item" like I usually am, so she could move a little faster.
I wish I had better spatial skills and could explain this better.
ETA: Doh, Emo22 obviously knows how parking for employees works. Can't believe I wrote this whole thing without noticing Emo's post.
