Is disk info recoverable after AppleWorks format?

[mmk@asdf.jericho.mc.com (Mike Krueger)]

An elderly neighbor of mine has invested quite a bit of data entry
time under AppleWorks for a personal project -- which he now stands
to lose because he inadvertently did a format of the first of three
disks that hold the data.  I have 20 years in the computer business
but I sure don't know the IIc / AppleWorks, so my question is whether
there is hackery that can recover the data on the formatted disk.  The
reason I would even ask is that he said that the format operation 
(which he did let complete) only took a few seconds, way shorter than 
a full media format would have needed.  

Any suggestions or a pointer to a FAQ for this group would be much
appreciated.

M<