on a neighbor's lawn by two fellow students, Cheryl Anderson and Tim Davis, who both had just left the party. They helped Smart to her feet and decided to walk her back to her nearby dormitory. Another student from the party, Paul Flores, joined their group and offered to help the two return Smart to her dorm room. Davis departed the group first since he lived off-campus and had driven to the party. Anderson was the second to depart the group, heading to Sierra Madre Hall, after Flores, who lived closer to Smart's dorm, assured Anderson that he could walk her there. Flores stated to police that he walked Smart as far as his dormitory, Santa Lucia Hall, and then allowed her to walk back to her Muir Hall dorm by herself. This was the last known sighting of her. Smart did not have any money or credit cards at the time she went missing. Official investigation The University Police Department originally suspected that Smart had gone on an unannounced vacation, as was common among students over the holidays, and as a result were slow in reporting her as a missing person to local law enforcement. She was only reported missing after a week, despite her family calling the police earlier. Several volunteers searched for Smart. Some of them were riding horses, and some used ground-penetrating radar devices. During the Laci Peterson murder investigation, there were unfounded rumors in the media that Laci's husband, Scott Peterson, had something to do with Smart's disappearance due to their simultaneous attendance at the Cal Poly campus. There was a brief initial inquiry into whether Peterson was tied to the disappearance, with Peterson denying any involvement, and he was eventually ruled out as a suspect by police. Although her body was never discovered, an earring that might have belonged to Smart was found by a tenant at the former residence of Paul Flores's mother. This earring was not marked as evidence and has since been lost by the police. Between 1996 and 2007, various searches for her remains and other evidence were conducted, some using cadaver dogs trained to detect the scent of human remains, including searches of properties owned by the Flores family. No useful leads were found for nearly two decades. On September 6, 2016, officials from the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office announced they were investigating a new lead in