Unfortunately, this is going to have to be your learning experience. From
now on, be sure to put in place a backup copy system of some kind. The Best
Buy 'recovery' option is nothing more than deleting everything, and
restoring 'factory defaults'

It is rare that someone "has to" take this draconian step, and in
fact, it is usually the wrong thing to do. Besides the difficulties
you've gotten yourself into, you never find out what was wrong and how
it happened, and are therefore likely to repeat the behavior that
caused the problem, quickly finding yourself back where you started.
Reformatting and reinstalling Windows should not be used as a
substitute for troubleshooting.

It is highly unlikely that you can get them back, and if you can, it
will cost a lot of money.

You're probably out of luck this time, but realize two points for the
future:

1. If the files on your computer are important to you, you *need* to
have in place a program of regular backup of them to external media.
Read my thoughts on backup here:
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314

2. If you should need any kind of service on your computer, Best Buy,
or any similar big box store, is the *worst* possible place to take
it. There are likely small independent computer technicians in your
area that are much more competent and less expensive. And for data
recovery, there are firms that specialize in this kind of work (but as
I said, they are expensive, and there's no guarantee that they will be
successful).