Files In Documents Have Disappeared

saves all of her documents in her documents folder, she has her signed rental notes, bills, her tax returns amongst other things, and most every file in the documents folder has disappeared. There are a couple files that didn't get deleted, some in her roboform folder (which is linked to her browser which is why I assume it wasn't deleted or, it might've been deleted but re-made when she opened her browser) and a couple other random files.

She hasn't been doing anything different the past couple days and she is not sure when exactly it happened, but she needs the files - and they're all gone. I am not very knowledgeable with Vista but I have checked a few obvious things and none of them seemed to work. What I did try was checking to see if the files were suddenly hidden, but they're not - and the size of the folders is very small (There's about 71 folders and sub folders and of all the files and folders, these 71 folders are all that's left) The documents folder itself is about 1.36 MB (yes, MB.) and I am pretty sure if the files were somewhere in that folder the folder size would bigger, regardless of if the files were hidden or not.

These files are also not in the recycling bin, and I've searched for a couple obvious names via the start menu search on the bottom but they have all brought back nothing. these files are extremely important and we really need to get them back.