Thank you to all who have taken the time to offer their helpful thoughts.

I think I am going to give walletrecoveryservices.com a try (Dave Bitcoin).
He charges nothing if unsuccessful and 15% if sucessful.

I will know if he was successful because there is only one unspent UTXO in the wallet, and I can monitor it.

He comes with a personal-use recommendation from Stephanie Murphy of The Bitcoin Talk podcast,
and interestingly, out of all the similar services online he is the only one who provides a PGP pubkey on his site
and pushes people to use it. If he scams me, I will let Stephanie know, and let her broadcast it.

I will report back here later on this. I am aware of the risks, and willing to accept them.

Thanks again.