HELP! iPhoto deleted my pics!

I was importing from my Canon 30D like I have done so 100000 times before, and I clicked "delete photos from camera after import" or whatever it says. The color wheel came up and sat there for 30 mins, which is 29.9 minutes longer than it's ever stayed up there before, so finally I force quit iPhoto. Now the 600 photo's have been deleted off my camera's memory card but I can't find them anywhere in iPhoto. Even though I watched as it imported all of them.

Where are they???? I'm freaking out, these photo's are VERY important.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

can you do a spotlight search on all files updated today?

or search for all files with the .jpg or .tiff or whatever extension that your camera saves images as?

As a suggestion, bit late now, never to use the 'delete photos' option. Found it much safer to erase the card/memory from the camera's menu.