Recovering lost iPhone with NO carrier and protected by passcode

I lost my company-issued iphone yesterday in a business parking lot. I have used "Find My iPhone" before to locate it, but in this case there are the following issues:

The phone is passcode protected. This means that if someone does find it, they won't be able to unlock it.

The phone has no service provider. I used it for software testing. This means the phone depends on wifi for all things internet, including location services. Thus, all of my attempts to play a sound or mark it as lost are forever in a "Pending" state, what with no way to communicate with the device.

Someone probably found it. Meaning they can't unlock it. They will probably bring it in range of a wifi network, but how can they connect the phone to it without unlocking it?

If an iphone has no service provider and no saved local wifi information, can a user still connect to a new wifi network from the Home screen?