Hello! My name is Adam, I"m from WV, USA where I've been working in Unity full-time for the last 3 years, during which I've worked with Oculus, Vive, and a few simple Google Cardboard AR projects so I can certainly get the programming side finished rather quickly, and significantly under your budget.
I'm still a bit fuzzy on your project requirements however and so would like to know a bit more of how you envision the end product. I could see a few potential options, with my personal choice being a more passive VR experience where the user can look around and the sequence of events play out as long as the user is looking at particular "key" object (could make a glow around the radio or a cellphone model to grab their attention and then once the user is looking towards it, the next bit plays out).
Something like this wouldn't take much time for programming, and would give plenty of room in this budget to hire a really talented artist to do a lowpoly environment and rigged character.
If this method is something you'd be interested in, I could do my part for around 800$ estimated at around 20$/hr.
I can certainly create a demo with placeholder art well before the end of the semester, which I'll do mostly in C# using Unity. The project will be shared with you using Unity Collaborate, ensuring you keep constant access to the updated project.
Please let me know if you have any questions,
Adam