SharePoint vToday doesn’t have this feature OOTB… but there are ways to extract deleted  content from DB backups. Check with your DBA (*wink*) for established processes.

This is what our DBA told me:
"No – I don't believe I can…I can only restore  documents in a
Library not lists"
That's why I turned here (to you)....... I was hoping you could
provide me with an answer to provide her! :)

A document library is nothing more than a type of list  in SharePoint. I’d ~assume~ the underlying storage would be identical between document libraries and lists… so I don’t see why it would be different. But I’ll have to defer to what they say… haven’t spent a lot of time in the SharePoint DB.

this is why we 'stsadm -o backup' 7 days a week.