I am trying to physically locate a specific wireless device. I have the wireless MAC but have not been able to find good method to do this. I did use airodump but this appears to only go as far to identify clients associated to an AP. I wondering if there is a way to search for the wireless MAC without relying on it as being associated to an AP. Is there some other tool anyone can recommend to do this?

The background: laptop stolen and I have a neighborhood where it may likely be. An item from my laptop bag was recovered there so I have a shot. Some friends and I have driven around with some hi gain omni-directionals but no luck so far.

There is no definitive way to pinpoint where that laptop would be. In your situation something like LoJack for Laptops would have helped in the sense it would have given you the ability to erase your information if you didn't encrypt it. That too though (Lo Jack for Laptops) is and was broken. I explained and dissected this program and its gimmick 5 years ago: http://cryptome.org/lojack-hack.pdf It "might" have helped save your data.

Anyhow, you're *hoping* that a stolen laptop connects to you. This is not a wireless router where it is transmitting its information for the world to see. On the contrary, the laptop even when transmitting will not be similar to what you would see fishing around for an open wifi network. You're better off using social engineering if you ask me: "Reward found missing laptop contains family pictures and genealogy information. Not concerned with laptop, solely care about my family's history. Reward no questions asked..." Where you're hoping someone is greedy/stupid enough to come forward: "Here I uh... Found this laptop, yea found this laptop and I uh... Just wanted to uh... Do the right thing... You said reward right..."