Hosting Company Doesn't Respond - Is My Domain Lost

its not actually my domain but the other day an older lady contacted me frustrated because she had lost her login info for her dog kennel site. She tried for over a month to get a hold of the company but no one returns her calls or emails. She contacted me to see if there was anything I could do. The first thing I did was fire off an email and call the number I was given. Left a msg to call me back, waited a few days sent another email and made another phone call...nothing. So I did some sniffing around and found the company had changed names to Black Wire Marketing (from teknon media). So I sent emails to them and made phone calls....it was the same phone system as the previous number.

My question is this, is there any protocol for recovering a website or more importantly the domain, if the hosting company has left town? The original site definitely resembles a flyby night reseller setup and not one that had a lot of thought put into it, wreaks of IM (why do IM people think they make good hosting service providers?).