Modules & VBA :: Pull Numbers From String And Get Max Value?

I have a series of IDs in an 'articles' table stored as text, e.g.

hb-123456789-e-068
hb-123456789-e-0069
hb-123456789-e-70
hb-123456789-e-00027

and I'm trying to pull the max value of the number after the -e- for a given set of them. In this example, I'd want to return the number 70. I'm then going to use that to create the next ID and populate another field.

The IDs are not used as the primary key. And while the previous IDs used leading zeros inconsistently, new IDs will not have leading zeros.

Here's what I have so far, but it doesn't seem to pull the number after the -e- at all. I think this section here is the problem, even though the same logic works in a query:

Code:
selectedERef = Val(Right(rs![masterArticleID], Len(rs![masterArticleID]) - InStrRev(rs![masterArticleID], " - ")))

Code:
Public Function MaxArticleERef(hbID As Long) As Variant
On Error GoTo err_handler
Dim db As DAO.Database
Dim rs As DAO.Recordset
Dim strSql As String
Dim maxERef As Variant

[code]....