[AccessD] Filter by Form stuff

I have on my form of interest a pair of combo-boxes that enable the user to
find stuff quickly. The form also has a set of buttons that invoke the
Filter-By-Form stuff. The former and latter parts work well, but not in
conjunction. I have written some code that examines the filter after the
Filter-By-Form stuff executes, and the results are weird. Everything begins
with "Lookup_*", where "*" refers to the controls you filled in while
addressing the Filter-By-Form form.

I need to deduce whatever filter the user applies and then re-scope the
"Finder" dropdowns to reflect this scope. I am at a loss for how to do this.
I already tried resetting the recordsouce and applying the filtered
statement and nothing I've come up with works.

Does anyone have a suggestion of how to accomplish this?

Buttons let the user describe a filter.
I need to re-scope the cbos to reflect the newly described filter (ie region
= 120 and distrcit = 02)
When my debug code prints the filter it says "Lookup_*" plus something.

I can parse this out using Replace() and that's trivial but I'm wondering
what the hell Access is doing behind the scenes that I don't comprehend.

TIA,
Arthur