Plumber's Cracked

I've had a drippy faucet in my kitchen for a couple of months now. It started off as a slow, annoying drip, drip, drip, but now it pretty much runs all the time. I'm certain I'm wasting hundreds of gallons of water a week. Last night I finally went to the Home Depot to pick up a new faucet for the kitchen to replace. DANG replacement faucets are expensive.

So last night I had a typical case of the insomnias and decided 1 a.m. would be a good time to start replacing the faucet. I went to the street, to the water shut-off valve, to shut the water off and made a startling discovery. The last plumber that came to my house, about 6 years ago, to replace a section of pipe that had burst during a freeze, apparently, broke the top off the cock seal so that there's no effing way I can emergently turn the water off to my house if/when I need to.

So my faucet still drips, and now I think I may need a plumber...and a million dollars.