ICloud Deleted Local Contacts From Address Book

Question

Okay, so I tried setting up an iCloud account so a family member could receive texts and messages via iChat. That was the original goal. I successfully set up an account, but iChat does not allow me to login via the iCloud account that I had set up. After sever attempts I decided to put that on the back burner until I had a little more time to look into it. In doing so I seem to have caused some other collateral damage which I didn't anticipate (see below).
Unfortunately, as I logged out of iCloud on the iMac, it wiped/deleted every last contact that was in the address book. My question is: How can I get them back?
I suspect that there is a "previous" or "prior" image of the data what was there. I'm guessing that Apple put some type of safeguard in place for just such an occurrance, though I could be wrong.
The Machine is a 2011 27" iMac running 10.7.5. The last backup of the address book that I can get to is from 2011. Actually it's the Address Book Folder in users>Library>Applications Support.   I made a copy of the entire system drive AFTER everything was migrated over from the old system that was replaced, and have it on an external drive.
Some notes:
- Time Machine was not active or on
- iCloud was never activated until just recently
- the person does not own an iDevice with any of the contacts
- iCloud does not seem to show any contacts to even bring back onto the iMac
It seems like a really silly thing to have any local data removed AT ALL upon signing out of iCloud. What's on the machine should remain on the machine unless the enduser literally goes out of there way to purposly delete the information stored there. There should be no dialog box what so ever even indicating that data will be removed, and even if the data was removed there should be an easy way to undo the action in case the enuser misinterpreted the action. Before any of the data is removed from the local the information (or at least a copy of it) should have been automatically stored to the cloudspace PRIOR. Why on earth would Apple set it up in such a way where the default is to delete any local data at all?

Answer 1

No. Absolutely not. We'll just have to agree to disagree. iCloud should be able to be turned on or off on any given device associated with said account. Local stores should be synchronized and that synchronization should happen continuously if connected. When not connected, local stores should maintain their state. What would be the purpose of even bothering to "sync". Or are you saying that in effect everything is copied to a central location (ie the cloud) and any devices wanting access to that data need to be "signed in", and in effect becoming nul terminals with no local store? Why should the default assume users would want to delete the synchronized data upon sign out?  iCloud should be a "use as needed" tool and not an "either/or" tool. In this case *it* should have backed the data up to begin with. That is the purpose after all. I (wrongfully) assumed in haste that the information was backed up or copied elsewhere and that even if I chose to delete it from the local device, I would still have access to it because it was stored "somewhere". And if the data wasn't synced/backed up to "the cloud" upon sign-in, then a friendly reminder alerting the user that now data had yet been saved would certainly go a long way. But this derails the entire thread. All I want to know is whether or not there is a way to retrieve the data that was erased from the iMac?