Upgraded to 1.13 open and the issue has been resolved.
The search function works, with no issue, and the software is functional for me again. The only system changes that were made, was to upgrade from PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.3 in support of the I-doit upgrade.
I will have to dig through release notes to see if the issue, or something related to this issue was called out, but as of this time it all works as expected.