I went to a small rural school on the east coast and circa 2005 or so I recall getting a mass email from an acquaintance explaining their new pronouns of ze/zir. That was the first I had ever heard about someone preferring different pronouns, and it was probably close to a decade before I heard those particular ones in any other context. All that is to say that it makes sense if it had made its way out to a rural college in 2005 it was probably being used a bit more widely in the SF a few years prior.