I bet the captain simply gave her a short briefing, told her to put on the headset and then said "touch nothing".
Having her upfront could have prevented a disaster if another unforseen event had occured at about the same time. (ie the swiss cheese analogy). If something else had happened she could have handled communications, navigation, read emergency checklists, etc.
It was a wonderful example of CRM but there's hardly any heroism involved. It's just a great example of a professional flight crew doing what needed to be done given the situation.
It's nice to see these examples surface in the media but is was probably pretty uneventful up front.