That would be an interesting twist. Maybe he actually calls Grissom, but he is tied up with some sort of conference or experiment, so Sara offers up her services. Maybe she needs a break from the bugs.Now that I can see, since he is in charge of CSI and so on. The team reaching out to her is fine but if you remember Ecklie the last time (in for Warrick I blieve) would have had to reinstate her, and she knew that wasn't going to happen. Ecklie being Ecklie I could see this.In one of the other articles about Sara/Jorja's return it said Ecklie is the one that contacts her about coming back.....
Catherine can say welcome to anyone, but not before Ecklie okays it.
Buuuuuut....who is the lab director now? Ecklie is the Undersheriff. I'm sure he could still do such things, but in the past he would have done them because he was directly in charge of the lab.