Not in Recycle Bin.

We found what looked like some of the files (via Windows Search), but they had a shortcut arrow on the icons. Not sure if this is Windows looking for them where they somehow no longer are readable (corrupted perhaps) or what.

If they were truly deleted in an accidental fashion I would think those entries would be gone.

They were in her (I assume) user folder, not the desktop.

I recommended she try to use recover file features in Advanced System Care as recommended a few posts back.

Remote desktop was so slow (only updated a little and only for a bit after each connect), and language was set to Italian to boot.

In other words... I wasn't much help.

Be sure to let us know the outcome, and how they were recovered... (fingers crossed for luck!)

What operating system does that computer have?

Some versions of Windows have a feature they call "shadow copy", that makes a hidden copy of some areas (usually the user data areas). If your operating system has that feature (Windows Vista and 7 have it, but the home versions don't have it activated), right-clicking on a folder and looking at "Properties" will show a "previous versions" (or something like that), and that will show you the copies that the operating system did.

Any way, good luck.

I have had that happen before.

I have a hard drive cloning program on my computer as a way to backup my data every couple months.

The first thing i do is clone the hard drive this way you can preserve the data from being over written on you drive that you lost the data on.
Once you have a cloned drive switch to it.
Then you can carefully start trying to find the lost or damaged data on the drive with the lost data on it.

Data is not removed from drives when data is dumped to trash its still there but the file name extension is changed.

Once you have the right data recovery software you can open those files if they have not been over written and change the file name extension back to one that you can see and open.

Its best to have a file recovery program on your computer long before you need it as downloading it after you have a problem can in its self overwrite the data you are trying to recover