White was last seen on April 28, 1979, during the Asotin County Fair in Astoin, Washington. She was last seen at the fairgrounds around between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. She called her mother said she wasn't feeling well. When White's mother went to pick her up, she wasn't there. Her classmates said she had been on her way home when they saw her last. White was riding her ten-speed Schwinn bicycle at the time of her disappearance. It has never been located. She had several activities planned for the upcoming summer: two camping trips, baseball and spending a month with her father. She is not believed to have left of her own accord.

Authorities believe White's disappearance may be connected to the 1982 disappearance of Steven Pearsall and the murders of stepsisters Kristina Nelson, 21, and Jacqueline A. "Brandy" Miller, 18, as well as the 1981 murder of Kristin David, a University of Idaho student whose dismembered body was found in the Snake River eight days after she vanished on a bike ride. Pearsall, Nelson and Miller of them disappeared from Lewiston, Idaho on the same night; the women were last seen walking to a grocery store and Pearsall vanished from the Lewiston Civic Theater, where he worked. Nelson and Miller's bodies were found in Kendrick, Idaho in 1984. Pearsall has never been located, but he is believed to have been a homicide victim.

Investigators have a person of interest in those cases, a man who has never been publicly identified. He was also one of the last people known to have seen White before she went missing. All of the cases remain unsolved.