Since this in AA-specific question (how to use a small amount of AA miles), I'm not sure why you asked this in MilesBuzz! rather the AA forum. But anyway:

There may some options on aa.com to use 8000 miles or less if that's all you have (magazines, for example), but why not let the account build up to something useful with your help?

First step is to make sure her account never expires. One solution: Sign her up for AAdvantage Dining. (From of your other posts, I see you live in NYC. There's oodles of participating restaurants there.) If you think she'll end up "accidentally" (if not "willfully") dining in one of those restaurants, just sign up any card she might use. Otherwise, sign up a card you could use and at least once a year or so do a dine at a participating restaurant. That'll add a few miles to her account (and only a few miles if it's just one dine), but that's completely enough to extend expiration for 18 months.

(That's assuming you've already accepted that AA will in fact not fold. )

In case you don't realize, AAdvantage Dining only asks for a card number, not expiration date or name on card, and doesn't check the name on card. So there's no problem using your card to earn miles for someone else that way. I helped a friend whose miles were about to expire by entering a new card I had just received (and only wanted to use once for a small purchase to trigger a first-use bonus) and I used it for a cheap sandwich. I got the first use bonus, my friend got an 18-month extension of AA expiration. Win, win.

By the way, AA lets you redeem for one-way trips, so once you get to 12500 you can book a one-way domestic flight. (You could then book the other way with your own miles, if you have 12500 at that point yourself, and that way someone could travel both ways while cleaning out a 12500 account.)

But will she never fly again on paid AA? If there's a chance she will (you almost both took a paid flight to Puerto Rico, it sounds like from the other thread, had prices not been so high for the time you wanted to go), you can just use the above trick to defer expiration and then wait for her to fly on AA again to get her account to a better level.

So first you have to decide whether you really want to clean out her account now (no matter how poor the value), or whether it makes more sense to just keep the account alive and then increase it when it's "natural" to do so.