And FWIW, having had many AC problems with old cars over the years, it is my
experience that the "weakest link" theorem applies, but augmented, when it
comes to AC stuff.

Mostly if you had a leak in your condenser, it is possible that when the
system was evacuated, debris/oil&dirt/whatever that was formerly under
pressure and crammed in some o-ring junction or whatever, or even a deformed
o-ring itself, may have been allowed to "relax" and expose a new opportunity
for a leak.  So when you recharge it, the original cause for the leak is
gone but a whole new one (probably at a hose joint) is created by no fault
of the repairman, except that they didn't thoroughly check for leaks when
they reassembled the system.

This has happened to me numerous times and is why I began doing my own AC
repair work to a limited extent, since once something goes south, it can be
a very long road of repeated sequential leaks before basically every
junction is broken down and refitted with new o-rings.  It's so much that
it's probably worthwhile as soon as the system leaks 100% (like with a hole
in the condenser) and requires evac, if the car's nearly 10 years old like
your Protege, to pay not only for the condenser repair, but while the system
is open, replace all of the o-rings at every fitting.  While this may seem
expensive, IMHO in the long run it can save you money because you won't have
to repeatedly pay for evac & recharge and new material each time the next
weak link is broken.  Doing the o-ring replacement over the whole system
will also allow the tech to discover any hoses or whatever that merit
replacement while he's in there.