Social media users have since taken a standoffish tone with law enforcement, including the Sac County Sheriff's Office, on the case. In December, Sac County Sheriff Ken McClure lamented "a whole bunch of keyboard detectives and Perry Masons out here" second-guessing the work of officers.
Smith said that, in his experience, few if any missing-persons cases or cold cases have been pursued as tirelessly as Schultz's disappearance.
"I know probably about six or seven officers and investigators that didn't have a Thanksgiving," he said. "They were working on this the whole time. I was one of them. The same for Christmas, a lot of time that normally would be spent with families, was spent expending extra hours in searching, trying to find David."
Last week, the Sac County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to use $25,000 of American Rescue Plan funds for a reward for information leading to Schultz. That dollar figure, Smith said, was an amount the county felt it could comfortably allocate out of its share of federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
Smith said that, from his reading of the law and U.S. Treasury Department regulations, the county is permitted to use its federal COVID-19 recovery funds in this manner. Municipalities have a fairly wide discretion in how they choose to use up to $10 million of these funds; Sac County received less than $1.9 million in total.