Can anyone explain what would happen if I created a wallet in 2010 and someone sent coins to the wallet address
If they actually did send the coins (and they haven't been moved since... the coins would still be attached to that address.
... gave me a tx number that I stuck in and hit receive, shut the wallet down and left Bitcoin demon running ( It probably didn't sync with the network) and went to work. When I got home the power had been off and the computer was off, I never had it back online since then. I looked on the block chain at old addresses and don't see that amount around the time it happened.
None of this makes any difference... you don't have to create a "receive request" or have your wallet online or synced or running... if the other party created, signed and broadcast a transaction to the network that was subsequently included in a block by a miner... then those coins are attached to that address.