White's parents took her from her home in the 3100 block of Broadway to to Harlem Hospital on August 4, 1987 because she had a 103-degree fever. Her mother stated that in the emergency room, she was comforted by a woman dressed in a white dress and a blue-green surgical smock. Her mother, who had never seen the woman before, believed she was a nurse. White was admitted as a patient, placed in the 17th-floor pediatric ward, and given intravenous antibiotics through her foot. Her fever broke afterward. She disappeared from her room sometime between 2:30 and 3:55 a.m. She has never been seen again.

The woman who spoke to White's mother was not a Harlem Hospital employee and had apparently been loitering at the facility for months prior to the infant's abduction; one nurse reported seeing her as far back as March. She was questioned twice and told a patient's family she was a nurse, and told a nurse she was visiting a patient. Hours before White's abduction, she was talking to the father of another patient in a room adjacent to White's room. A nurse questioned them and the woman claimed she was a nurse from another floor. A security guard saw the unidentified woman leave the hospital at 3:30 a.m. He did not notice a baby, but the woman could have concealed an infant under her smock.

Authorities believe this woman abducted White. She was 5'8 tall and weighed 180 to 190 pounds, and she was 25 to 35 years old in 1986. She had a light complexion and some hair under her chin. Investigators located and interviewed one possible suspect in Baltimore, Maryland a few days after White was kidnapped, but the woman did not have White and was not charged in her disappearance. White's disappearance is believed to be the only abduction from a hospital in New York City history.

In 1989, authorities stated they believed White's disappearance was connected to the presumed abductions of Andre Bryant, Christopher Dansby and Shane Walker. Bryant, six weeks old, was abducted from the New York City borough of Brooklyn in March 1989 after his mother was murdered. Dansby, 2, and Walker, 1, disappeared from the same Harlem park in May and August 1989 respectively. All of the cases remain unsolved and it is unclear what happened to any of the children.

White's parents sued the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation after her abduction and obtained a six-figure settlement in 1992. They placed half the sum, over $162,000, in trust for White. If she had been located by her twenty-first birthday on July 15, 2008, she could have collected the money. That date passed without White being recovered, however. White's parents separated about a year after her abduction. They are now married to other people and have their own families and children. She remains missing and her case is unsolved.