It's over a year old now, but here's an article where the family discusses the volunteer search effort that occurred in 2015.
http://davisclipper.com/bookmark/26...-for-clues-in-man-s-mysterious-disappearance
Unfortunately, the search yielded nothing. The search was done with the notion that Steven may have went off to an area adjacent to the community, so they checked there.
Interestingly enough it's mentioned the group has taken another look at Steven's emails, phone logs etc as well.
In this article, the search efforts are explained a bit further.
http://fox13now.com/2015/05/15/new-...ing-since-2009-sparks-renewed-search-effort/
The theory that we have this time as we start our search is the subject decided to go high, and go a little bit higher into the mountains, Niziolek said. Were going to be sending out five different teams, and were going to follow the wash.
While I am glad a team took the time to do this, I couldn't disagree more with their theory. They state they think Steven "decided" to go to this area next to the community, as if they are likely taking the angle he went there and took his own life.
But this completely ignores the fact his phone pinged north of that area in a few close residential areas. It also doesn't seem to consider the timing of his arrival, the lack of hesitation while walking in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and why he would have taken a folder with him to walk into an area like that.
Again, I commend the efforts but I definitely don't think he walked through that community into a desolate area and took his own life. Murdered, maybe but still that leaves the question of the phone activity much further away from that area.
We obviously don't know if the cell phone pings are indicative of Steven's travel, but surely it should be considered and that certainly is away from the search area.
In the first article one of the family members makes an interesting point:
Are we asking the right questions? said Dallin Koecher. One thing that I keep coming back to is that it seems all the phone calls (Steven made) were accounted for. It must have been someone who knew him who told him to go to that area.
Now, Steven has never struck me as the kind of guy who had a separate "burner" phone with him to mask his illegal activities. I think with the phone logs being accounted for, it means whatever led him to this area was conducted in a way without a phone, whether that means over a computer or in person.
It seems like the family understands that and seems to think someone he personally knew sent him to Nevada. At this point, I think I agree.
Had this been legitimate, perhaps someone would have came forward and said "Yeah, I sent Steven there for a job. Something must have went horribly wrong." But obviously if this was something illegal, no one is going to involve themselves in that.
Obviously these were older articles, but worth a look if you missed them.
