jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I have looked through the help forum and found many people having issues with setting the editoptions column property dynamically, STRICTLY FOR SEARCHING.
None of the answers seemed to have solved my problem.
I have this colModel defined.
colModel: [
...
{ name: 'status', label: 'Status', index: 'status', width: 100, sorttype: 'text', edittype: 'select', editoptions: { value: ':'} },
...
]
It appears you have to set 'editoptions' or on the search form, nothing will appear for an input for the that column.

I want to retrieve data dynamically and populate this select input.
I have tried this:

loadComplete: function() {
jQuery("#opportunities").setColProp('status', { editoptions: { value: "1:One;2:Two"} });
}

I have also tried changing the data in the quotes to "1:2", still nothing.
Please note: The data will eventually be populated dynamically, this is just a test.
nothing gets populated. This appears to be simple to do in theory, however, why this does not work is beyond me.

Neal