My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: California

My mom, though 72 years old, is still a vibrant and healthy woman and want to keep working. She can't stand the idea of sitting at home. She has been at her job for about 17 years. A month ago they called her into the office and told her that they were eliminating her position, that her job duties would be split up among the three remaining persons in her department. She was asked if she had thought about retirement. Of course, the company does not offer retirement, they mean Social Security. She works in a classified ad department of a newspaper. She specializes in what they call legals and handles all of them, she answers the phone and assists walk-in customers. She is trained on regular classified ads and fills in when she runs our to legal ads to work on. Her two co-workers do the majority of the classified ad work. A month has gone by and now they have called her in again and given her a "severance package". They are offering her $10K if she signs about four pages of documents that state that she is voluntarily giving up her position and retiring. Did not say what would happen if she did not accept their offer but they told her that her last day would be August 30th. I don't know if she waits them out and they terminate her or call if a reduction in work-force if she qualifies for unemployment or not (does age matter?) Meanwhile they have an opening for a new classified ad representative. Doesn't make sense to me, it's not like she making $60K, she only makes about $26K.....

Any advice? Take the money and run from a place that no longer wants you there. Is it age discrimination? How can they lay her off and then hire someone new for nearly the same job?