Recreate the 'user-search-result-email-block' using REST

Here is and example of the user search REST call you can make:

http://yourcommunity.com/restapi/vc/search/users?q=test

If the results of that call do not return enough information, you can use the "href" parameter of each user object in the results to make another call to get the info for that user -- something like this:

http://yourcommunity.com/restapi/vc/users/id/525