Justine Busse, assistant store director for the PCC in Fremont, says that when veteran employee Jeff Johnson didn’t show up for work last week, she knew something was wrong.”It’s way out of character for him,” Busse tells Seattle Weekly.But when co-workers and friends went to the authorities to try to get officers to search for him, Busse says no one was interested.Johnson’s body was discovered on Thursday in Carkeek Park–not by police, but by his friends and co-workers.”Police just don’t look for people like that,” a frustrated Busse says. “When it comes to adult missing people, they just assume they’ve taken off.”The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office fielded the original missing-person report on Johnson, since he lives in unincorporated Snohomish County. Rebecca Hover, SCSO spokesperson, confirms that no search was performed by deputies, but she says they had no reason to think something bad had happened to him. This flyer had been hanging up at PCC since Johnson went missing.”We didn’t have any signs of foul play,” she says. “Every case is different and we were just following up on tips.”Busse, however, isn’t convinced. “It’s amazing,” Busse says. “The police’s attitude is that it’s up to family and friends to organize searches.”The cause of Johnson’s death has not been officially ruled on yet. But some initial media reports claim it was a suicide. Johnson’s friends and co-workers had found his car at Carkeek Park over the weekend, and at that point had apparently tried to get the Seattle Police Department to search for him, since the park is in Seattle city limits. SPD apparently gave a response similar to the SCSO’s.Asked about the case, an SPD detective refused to comment and asked to remain anonymous in doing so. At this point, Johnson’s body still needs to be positively identified by the King County Medical Examiner. After that, any death investigation would be handled by Seattle Police. Busse says that she and her co-workers will try get things back to normal at work.”When you work with someone 40 hours a week, they become like family,” she says. “Searching for him was the least we could do, and we’d do it for any employee.”Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.