If she needs a sim card then only GSM phone are for her as Verizon doe not use sims. Also, I found from experience that a lot of phones sold on ebay,Tiger Direct etc. are foreign branded. Son bought a cool Ericsson phone only to find it was from an Australian phone co and most of the features offered on ATT here couldn't be accessed with that phone. It did work for calls and messages. Some sites will say if it is US or European (international)branded, some don't.

She could probably go to WalMart and buy a cheap ATT or T=Mobile pay as you go phone and replace the sim with one from China. It has to have the correct band frequencies as the co in China to work though.