I was stuck in Monterey (no complaints
) for a week years back waiting on tires. finally was over it and towed the car back to our store and slapped the stock tires on and waited. I think it ended up taking about month till those tires were back in stock and that was all before all these crazy supply chain issues. Seems everything these days is being impacted, sucks! Im sure there are a lot of stories like this right now happening all over with various scenarios
Bummer on your friend OP, hopefully he was able to eventually go see his mother...