Hi runner15
According to your description, you'd like to search through the different columns. You could refer to the following links.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/700874/Multi-Column-Filter-GridView-With-Effective-Paging
Besides, you could use the jqGrid . It's easy way to do this.
http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=wiki:toolbar_searching
http://www.trirand.net/examples/grid/appearance/toolbar/default.aspx
Best Regards
Klein zhang