External Hard Drive WD My Book 1 TB - Mac

Hello,
I am so desperate to recover my data. Here's what happened:

My external hard drive was knocked off of my desk (WD My Book 1TB). (I have a mac computer by the way). The place for me to connect my USB cord was no longer visible. I was scared to do anything myself, so I took it to my local computer solution store. They are PC guys, but also a friend of mine, so looked at it for me.

When they took the HD out of the casing and hooked to my computer, the disc utility came up. They sent me home and told me that they would create a clone of my hd and then "tinker" with it. They said it was not making the "ticking sound", so they thought it should be ok. When I called a couple of hours later, they told me that I would need to send it to a data recovery place (ECO Data Recovery). He said that it was now showing "unformated drive".

Now the data recovery place tells me that it looks like a new drive...nothing on it. He said that the HD does not look damaged, but can't understand what else happened to it. I was thinking that the local computer place must have deleted everything and now it could never be recovered.

But I've seen data recovery software that say that they can recover deleted hard drives and reformatted hard drives.

Should I get my hopes up????
HELP!!!!

thanks so much! any help would be so greatly appreciated.
Stacy