> reaching out to the old developers to see if they have a copy

I think you mean "older devs that are still with the company" but I was once contacted by a former employer for exactly this: they had lost source code for the billing system. I didn't have the source code so that was easy to answer. Developers that have stolen intellectual property from former employers may want to consider carefully how they answer such questions...

Also, I was never supposed to have had access to this code whilst I was employed so I did wonder if there was more to it than just "oops we lost it can you help?". Perhaps they were trying to chase down a leak or something? I never heard back though (they survived).