Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother was abducted from her Tucson home on February 1.
A nationally known rescue organization submitted a detailed 41-page search plan to Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos the same week.
Nanos has not responded to a single page of it – and his own deputies just told you exactly what kind of sheriff he is.
Who the United Cajun Navy Is and Why Chris Nanos Has No Excuse
If you lived through Hurricane Katrina, you know the United Cajun Navy.
They are the people who showed up in flat-bottomed boats when FEMA was still figuring out where to park its trucks.
Founded in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005, the UCN grew from a grassroots network of private boat owners into an organized volunteer force with tens of thousands of members nationwide, deploying to Hurricane Harvey in Texas, Hurricane Michael in Florida, and major flooding events across Louisiana and Mississippi.
The UCN has found missing children alive – including 12-year-old Ryan "RJ" Davis, recovered in Oklahoma after over a week missing when law enforcement and UCN volunteers coordinated a targeted ground search.
They are certified cadaver dog handlers, drone operators, tracking specialists, and search commanders who operate under strict protocols and defer entirely to the lead law enforcement agency on every call.
UCN incident commander Josh Gill flew to Tucson in February with a 41-page operational plan in hand.
Every action, every media inquiry, every piece of evidence found – all of it routed directly to the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
Gill submitted it. Nanos never answered.
"We have not been contacted on the plan that we provided," Gill told Fox News Digital. "I'm open to developing a new plan with law enforcement."
The Cadaver Dogs and Drones Nanos Refuses to Deploy
The plan was not a rough sketch.
It called for certified cadaver dogs sweeping land and bodies of water across the Tucson desert.
It included a tracking dog trained to follow specific human scent trails and heat-detecting drones running GPS-tracked grid searches from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
Volunteer EMTs were on standby for searchers injured by extreme heat, uneven terrain, wildlife, or the pitch-dark nights created by Tucson's strict light-pollution ordinances.
The UCN proposed searching desert scrubland outside the city, a network of drainage ditches locals call "washes," remote access areas, and abandoned structures – the exact terrain where evidence deteriorates fastest under Arizona's sun.
Under the plan, every action, every media inquiry, every piece of evidence found – all of it routed directly to the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
"We've got some of the best and brightest, and our network is huge," Gill told Fox News Digital. "Let us work with the sheriff's department to do what's best."
Nanos has not been in contact since February.
What 80 Days of the Pima County Sheriff Investigation Has Produced
Nancy Guthrie – mother of NBC Today co-host Savannah Guthrie – disappeared in the early hours of February 1 after returning from dinner at her daughter's home nearby.
Surveillance video captured a masked man at her front door.
Blood drops matching Nancy's DNA were found on her front step the following morning.
Her back door had been propped open.
Nothing of value was taken from the home.
The family offered to pay a ransom demand. No one collected it. Nancy Guthrie has not been returned.
Last week, investigators confirmed a hair sample found inside the home has been transferred from a private Florida DNA lab to the FBI for more advanced testing.
That is 80 days of investigation producing one hair sample and no suspect in custody.
Nanos released the crime scene days after the abduction – before investigators had exhausted the property – then returned multiple times to re-investigate ground already cleared.
His own department went nearly a month without a public statement on the case, then broke its silence this past week with a post so carelessly worded it sent thousands of Americans into a panic believing Nancy Guthrie had been found.
A post said "Nancy has been located."
The Nancy located was a different woman entirely.
Pima County Sheriff's deputies union has seen enough – passing a unanimous no-confidence vote and calling for Nanos to resign, citing a disciplinary history he allegedly concealed from the department for more than 40 years.
Independent journalist Cherise Wilson, who focuses on missing persons and human trafficking cases, has launched a Change.org petition demanding Nanos accept the UCN's plan.
"Knowing that somebody took advantage of a loving lady, an elderly lady like that, is really disturbing," Wilson told Fox News Digital.
Wilson is right – and what is equally disturbing is a sheriff who will not pick up the phone.
The Question Chris Nanos Has Not Answered
Gill told Fox News Digital he is willing to scrap the plan entirely and build a new one from scratch with Nanos at the table.
"I don't think there would be any harm," Gill said. "I think it would be one step closer to providing some closure not just to the family or the community, but to the nation."
That offer has been sitting in Nanos's inbox since February.
Every week he refuses to engage is a week of desert heat, monsoon rain, and deteriorating evidence conditions working against Nancy Guthrie's family.
Even the nation's top law enforcement chiefs have put it in writing: organized volunteer groups operating under sheriff command are a force multiplier, not a liability.
Nanos doesn't have a reason to say no.
He has an excuse – and 80 days of nothing to show for it.
Sources:
- Michael Ruiz, "Louisiana search and rescue nonprofit says it offered services in Guthrie case," Fox News, April 20, 2026.
- "United Cajun Navy mobilizes to locate missing people nationwide," KLFY, March 17, 2026.
- "United Cajun Navy joins hunt for 'Today' host Savannah Guthrie's missing mother," WACH, February 24, 2026.
- "Pima County sheriff no stranger to controversy as criticism in Nancy Guthrie case ramps up," Fox News, February 14, 2026.
- "Nancy Guthrie case: Sheriff Chris Nanos urged to resign after no-confidence vote," NewsNation, March 2026.
- "Sheriff's Dept Slammed for Misleading Nancy Guthrie Post," Capitalism Institute, April 18, 2026.