"It's just like everything has stopped, you know, like he was nothing," Shelby Ward, the missing man's sister, told the Appalachian News-Express of Pikeville.
Ward said she saw the same lack of concern when her sister, FBI informant Susan Smith, disappeared some 13 years ago in the same area of eastern Kentucky. Her body was found about a year later, and FBI agent Mark Putnam was charged with her murder.
The search for Adam Daniels, 24, of Freeburn, was officially suspended on May 13, after 11 days of searching the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. Even so, search teams still are periodically going out on the river in search of the missing man.
Ward said she has tried to prod search teams to do more.
Daniels was washed into the Tug Fork on May 2 after trying to drive through swift water that had flooded a highway at Freeburn. His car was pulled from the river the next day, but Daniels was not in it.
Authorities say Daniels is presumed drowned.
"I begged him not to go down the road because the river was so high," said Daniels' mother, Tracy Daniels.
Doug Tackett, coordinator of Pike County Disaster and Emergency Services, said crews, including divers and cadaver dogs, have searched the river and found nothing.
"We're not satisfied with not finding him either," Tackett said.
Tackett said the body could have been swept miles downstream.
"We're pretty well confident he's not anywhere along the riverbanks," Tackett said.
Tackett said he and a dive team plan to be back on the river this week, searching several areas, including one where a cadaver dog may have smelled a body.
"The dogs say there's something there but we haven't been able to find it," Tackett said.
Ward said she pushed for months to get authorities to investigate an affair between her sister and the FBI agent. That connection finally led to the discovery of her sister's body. Ward said she plans to continue pushing just as hard for help to find her brother's body.
"We know he's gone. We know he's dead," Ward said. "It's just an awful, terrifying, horrifying feeling."