here's the website for Printing Industries of San Diego: www.piasd.org/

i would totally hit them up to see if the can help find you someone; give them the whole schpeal about working with students, future generations of print professionals, etc. and they'll probably bend over backwards to help you. ask them if there's a print program at any of the local colleges; they may be willing to do work as class assignments.

also try this site: www.printaccess.com/perl/pia
you can search for printers directly. most printers are willing to talk about their craft, and you can start asking around for favors. don't be afraid to ask! give them the sob story, whatever it takes. ask them if they know anyone else who might be able to help.

on the PDF thing: give some more detail about your process for making PDFs -- what program, what function in the program? it sounds like you're using InDesign for the layout. is that how you're making the PDFs?

"Do I have to figure out the size of the pictures like I used to have to, or can the person just fit the pic to the hole I leave, or can indesign actually now incorporate the picture at a high DPI?"

the art resolution has to be high enough to support the output line screen, genreally 2-2.5X the printing line screen of your final output. so if you're printing with a line screen of 150lpi, then your art should be at least 300ppi. that's presuming your art is at 100%. if it is scaled, then the resolution need has to scale as well. also, that's for half-tone art; line art is a totally different matter...

you CAN leave image frames where you want things to be and have someone place the images. figuring out the scaling percentage first is highly recommended.

What do the images look like when you print from InDesign?

What do you mean by funky? Lo-resolution? looks bitmapped?