Scofield and her mother left their Ocala, Florida residence together on July 22, 1976. Her mother took a driving test while Scofield exchanged a pair of sandals at the J. M. Fields department store. She also planned to buy a birthday present for her brother. Scofield returned the shoes and was last seen at the mall at approximately 2:00 p.m. that day. Scofield never met her mother at the designated location they had agreed on and she reported her daughter as missing. Scofield has never been seen again.

A witness reported having seen a girl matching Scofield's description two hours after she was reported missing. The child was in Nuby's, a convenience store at the intersection of Highway 40 and State Road Highway 314, less than a mile from the Ocala National Forest. with one or two adult males. They purchased sodas and left. The child was shaking and appeared to be very frightened. She and the adult male companion(s) were never identified and law enforcement authorities are not sure if she was in fact Scofield.

Scofield lived with her family in a mobile home in Citra, Florida in 1976. She was an honor student at Marion Middle School, regularly attended church, and worked at her parents' barbecue. Investigators do not believe she ran away from home, as she was not having any personal problems at the time of her disappearance. There was some speculation at that her disappearance might be linked to the 1975 disappearances of Sheila and Katherine Lyon, but no evidence connecting the cases was discovered and all three remain unsolved.