Where are my contacts?

I had to have my Captivate replaced yesterday because of water damage...don't ask!  When the salesperson put the SIM card in there were NO contacts on it.  What happened to them is the question of the day.  There was a question at the start up of the phone about saving them to the google account or somewhere in AT&T.  Well, I have no idea where I saved them to when I got the phone last month and I don't even know what the salseperson did at the store today!  I checked google and they are not there.  How and where is this AT&T thing?  Please tell me that they are there and how to get them!!!!  I am so bummed that I have to go through figuring out all the stuff that I had finally figured out, but now I have no contacts!  Life is not good, please help!



Mk edit:  Post subject clarification

So there can be multiple contacts from different sources on the phone i.e. the SIM card, the phone's memory itself, and your gmail account associated with the phone.  If the contacts on the phone were not synced with your gmail account, that would explain why they are not showing up.