Keep in mind that Helen is an admin on not just Outpost but other large communities such as SteamRep, she also is the Community Manager at Microsoft. These jobs require more of her attention than Outpost appeals, so emails sent to her will take time before they are answered.

1. Yes Helen is an admin who receives email appeals.
2. Yes Helen replies to all appeals she looks into.
3. Yes it is OK to do that, though keep in mind it won't get it read any faster.

The ability to search for closed trades was mainly removed to prevent the site from having to index a larger volume of trades at once. However this has been suggested previously and a workaround is currently being considered.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/tf2outpost/discussions/6/540744475121167054/

Edit as of 2:30 MST: Things might have normalized at this point, scrap.tf have brought their services back online.

Ban appeals are not allowed here.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/tf2outpost/discussions/0/558747922562007365/#c540742485382216907

The user you reported had their post hidden, however because you insulted the user, you were banned (note that this is your third ban for rude language), for 3 days. Once you get unbanned please do not insult other users, just block them and move on.

http://www.tf2outpost.com/
http://www.csgoutpost.com/
http://www.dotaoutpost.com/

All tickets assigned to retired admins will be eventually reassigned to active ones. You just need to be patient and wait.

After 30 minutes, you should notice an up arrow next to your trade, click that to bump it.

So long as the user isn't marked anywhere else or has any pending reports you are allowed to trade with them.

Ban appeals are not allowed on the forums.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/tf2outpost/discussions/0/558755530343215312/

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/tf2outpost/discussions/0/558747922562007365/#c540742485382216907

I believe most people just put spaces before the words to centre the text, as there is no formatting option to centre text.