I wasn't in the situation, and I'm not the OP... so I don't know if she is being real or not. I'll take it at face value and assume she is being sincere.

The nail in the coffin for your situation was asking for party lead. >_<;; Of course the people who passed you lead probably assumed you were trolling them (at first). You'd be surprised how often people specifically form a 'Turn 1' group just to pull people into a higher Turn (such as 5) and laugh at them. There was a thread a few weeks back about this very occurrence... someone had joined a Turn 1 group and was pulled into Turn 5 against their will. The other people in the group just laughed and there was nothing that person could do... they were stuck for that week.