Is it possible for you to switch cars with your daughter for a week or two? When it happens, maybe you’ll notice something your daughter doesn’t as you have more experience with driving.
Is this a stick shift? If so, has your daughter have much experience driving stick shift? It may be she’s just having some trouble with learning to work the clutch.
I wouldn’t have guessed the ignition lock myself, but it’s a possibility. It could be the fuel pump. Mechanics have easy ways to test a stuck fuel pump, but it has to be stuck at the time they test it.
I think you have to careful not to be pro-active rather than reactive on addressing this problem. Simply replacing everything that might be the cause is being reactive. Pro-active is going about finding the cause in a systematic fashion.
Me, I’m not a professional mechanic. I’m just a shade-tree “fix it in my driveway” mechanic, so I’d approach this problem like any other car problem I have. I’d read the manufacturer’s shop manual for the make/model/year of the car, get some ideas from that for possible causes of this symptom, and go through them one by one following the shop manual test procedures. That always has worked for me.
Since you probably aren’t interested in this way of doing things yourself, you don’t have the time and tools etc, and you are working on a budget, what I think you need is a good independent mechanic who has experience fixing Fords. The best way to find one is to ask friends, relatives, fellow church goers, work mates, etc, anyone you have a personal relationship with, for a recommendation for who to use as a mechanic. Then go to that mechanic, ask what his Ford experience is, and if ok, tell him you came to use his services becausae “Joe Smith” or whoever it was referred him to you.
That yields a good start. You have some leverage. The mechanic knows that if he does a good job for you, you’ll tell Joe Smith, and Joe Smith will be more likely to be a return client. And visa versa.
Good luck. This doesn’t sound like too difficult of a problem for a good Ford-experienced mechanic to solve.