Ok, I'm going to assume Windows Forms.
WinForms' ListViewItem class has a Name property, which you can use to look up a specific item in a list. So as you populate the list, assign a unique value to the Name of each:
var item = new ListViewItem("Text");
item.Name = "foo"; // some unique id string
listView1.Items.Add(item);
That way you can locate the item in the ListView later, using its Items.Find method.
var fooItem = listView1.Items.Find("foo", false);
Matt Hamilton
2009-10-26 00:18:26