Laravel 5 Session Issue

I have run into an issue that looks like it results from somewhere here (as the user is doing nothing else at the time) but by running the following controller script, there sessions will timeout only after a few script runs:

public function pullDetails(Request $request){
            $json = file_get_contents('https://webservices.rrts.com/TrackWebApi/api/values/'.$request->num);
            return response()
            ->json(['details' => $json]);
        }

I don't see anything in the logs to indicate why it shrinks her session time, but she had to reload and log back in only after running this three times (within a minute of completing all three).

Is it because it goes to an external site to pull details or what?

Thanks - Matt

via Chebli Mohamed