Welcome to Flyertalk.
I'm sorry to hear about your father. I hope he is feeling better.
I'm sure your parents were traveling on non-refundable/changeable tickets. Did they ask SAS to change those tickets? I'm sure that could be done for a much lesser fee.
I would have done this myself, not relied on a concierge. If they couldn't, they should have someone else in the family call for them. The tickets purchased are the most expensive there are, there are Economy Extra or even Economy tickets available for immediate travel for a fraction of the price they paid. The person who handled SAS here does not know a lot about booking airline tickets.
If they paid 10 grand, it must be 2 full fare business class tickets and if they were on stand by, the flight must have been full, hence the stand by status.
Did they check other routings? Other airlines?
While SAS sometimes are very flexible in situations like these, I don't know a single airline that allows re-booking of non changeable tickets without a fee.
That's why we have travel insurance. Your parents will of course be covered in a situation like this. I'm sure they have travel insurance?
I can offer to help you out with my contacts at SAS, but there are many questions that needs to be answered.
Please PM if you want me to assist you