Transmission does not shift from first gear to second gear, in operable

Hi,

I know very little about how cars operate so I hope you can help me with this problem in terms anyone can understand. :)

My daughter was given the vehicle listed above stick-shift wagon by her grandfather last year and it is now inoperable. He did not drive it that often but was good at maintenance. The car worked relatively fine for some months, but when my daughter was learning to drive stick, she would somewhat often have an issue where the gear shift would not move correctly into 2nd gear. I pretty much never had this issue when I drove it, so I attributed it to her being too tentative and me a little more aggressive when shifting. However, my wife did tell me that she once had an incident years ago with this car where she could not get the car to shift correctly and was stuck at a stoplight for a minute. Very infuriating! She felt that her parents believed it could sometimes happen when it got cold, although no one could ever find anything wrong with it. We live in northern California, btw, so it can get cold, but not that cold and not for that long.

Anyhow, at some point this last fall/winter my daughter began to have shifting trouble more often and I then found that I could very rarely have it, as well. For me, because I shifted very firmly, it seemed I could get out of the problem fairly easily, but my daughter felt she just couldn't shift and would be stuck on the side of the road. Finally, she called me one day and said she couldn't drive it so I went out to see if I could get it going. The darn thing just didn't want to shift out of first going into second; it would grind terribly. I was able to get enough speed to bypass second and then the car drove fine at the higher gears. I tried downshifting to second and was sometimes able to do so, but other times not. As I approached home, I forced the shifter into second since I had enough speed to do so, and it actually let me. I then parked. Unfortunately, something must have snapped or become completely misaligned because when I tried to drive again, I appeared to be stuck in second. The shifter could move all over, but the car just died immediately when I released the clutch.

So, now the car won't shift at all and appears to be stuck in, I assume, second gear.

I hope that is enough information for you to give me a good sense of what is wrong and whether or not it is worth fixing. Thanks, in advance, for any help.