practicality
The screw in and out does come off in the purse. My wife and yours have went to the same "school."
Has your wife somehow bumped or inadvertantly pressed the protruding on / off button, turning the light on, and then depleting the batteries so that when she needed the light it was dead? Mine has.
And all those button batteries; while they do provide longer burning time, also are quite expensive. Since my wife goes through hers too often, my preference is for the alkaline AAA or AA as you state.
She really doen't need 130 hours battery burn time. Two days should do her what ever fix she's gotten into.
She will only be using it for searching for dropped keys in the dark, finding the panic button in a stuck elevator, or like she did last week, keeping herself from tripping and falling in the super market when a storm killed the power and the emergenct lights failed too.
So no million lumen search light is required, no sharp edge bezeled scraping device either, but a light that will not go on unless purposely switched, one that runs on common batteries, and does not cost more than four or so battery replacements.
Now where can we get one like that?
