The Benefactors : Mystery That Gave Girl Chance to Excel Ends on Graduation Day

On Saturday, her graduation day, Stephanie Scofield of Fullerton finally learned the identity of her mysterious benefactor who secretly had paid more than $2,000 a year in tuition so she could attend a Catholic girls’ school in Fullerton.

During those four years, Stephanie studied hard to earn a 3.37-grade-point average, played hard to become a Southern California volleyball star and wondered who she had to thank for her opportunities. Only the principal at Rosary High School knew, and she was sworn to secrecy.

When Stephanie found out Saturday, she didn’t see it coming. She wept for nearly 15 minutes.

Yet, it almost didn’t happen. Two days before Stephanie’s graduation, her benefactors (there turned out to be two of them, a husband and wife) were still anguishing over whether to remain anonymous forever.

“I never really had any intention of letting her know,” the wife said. “I just wanted to do it with no strings attached.”

“I do not want them feeling like they owe us anything,” the husband said.

But by then, a newspaper account of Stephanie’s volleyball achievements (all-Sunset League, league’s most valuable player, all-California Interscholastic Federation, Southern Section team) had been posted on campus and reprinted in the school annual. The article mentioned her mysterious patron, and curiosity about Stephanie’s benefactor spread across the 591-student campus.

The chain of events actually had begun nearly 11 years earlier.

Harold Scofield, a certified public accountant, had moved with his wife and two daughters to their upper-middle-class Fullerton neighborhood in 1974, but three years later he developed severe heart problems and died. His wife, Maxine Scofield, went to work as a department store merchandising secretary and became the family’s sole support.

“We tried to live within my income,” she said. “You have to be realistic about it.” She was able to keep the house in Fullerton; its mortgage payments are now cheaper than most apartment rents. But when time came for Stephanie to graduate from St. Mary’s Elementary School in Fullerton, there wasn’t enough money to send her to Rosary High School, her first choice.

“It was a small school, and I had friends there,” Stephanie said. “I had such a close-knit group of friends, and they were going there.”

‘I Was So Overwhelmed’

The phone call changed all that. The principal of St. Mary’s told Maxine Scofield that an anonymous person in the parish wanted to foot the bill for Stephanie’s four years at Rosary. “I really didn’t know what to say,” Maxine Scofield said. “I was so overwhelmed.”

She said she has never tried to discover the patron’s identity out of respect for his or her modesty, but she couldn’t help but wonder. “I have no idea who it is, but it has to be someone who’s very, very compassionate. I have a feeling that they may have gone through something like this themselves and they know what it’s like to have a member of their family die, and they could have been given this the same way.”

In a house about a 30-second walk from the Scofields’, a husband and wife explained why they had done something so unusual.

It was really his wife’s idea, said the husband, an attorney.

“My dad died (in a traffic accident) when I was 4,” she said. “I know there were a lot of people in my life who made a difference during that time of growing up. They probably paid special attention to me because of it. I didn’t have a dad all my life, so I just kind of noticed Stephanie from time to time.

“We really didn’t know Stephanie very well,” she recalled. But when Stephanie mentioned that she was not going to Rosary High because her mother couldn’t afford it, something clicked in her memory. A parish priest had paid her sister’s tuition for a year because the family had not been well off. “Someone had touched me, and I wanted to touch Stephanie,” she said.

They called the principal, made the offer and swore her to secrecy. “My kids don’t even know,” the wife said.

Concern About Relationship

She said she and her husband were still unsure about whether they should reveal their identities, “because I wonder, you know, just what will come of it, whether it will change the relationship” with the Scofields. During Stephanie’s high school years, she became the couple’s regular baby-sitter. The couple have come to know her and her mother well. They had received letters from both Stephanie and her mother, forwarded through the principal, expressing appreciation.

“I didn’t tell them because I didn’t want her to say, ‘Why are they doing this? I don’t understand this,’ ” the wife said. “And there are other people too. How will other people deal with us? People take what you do and say in so many different ways. It’s just that our happiness has come from doing things like this. People out there do things like this all the time, but you never know about it.”

And perhaps, she added, that’s the way it should be.

Saturday’s graduation ceremony on the school’s grassy field ended at about 1 p.m. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie, one of 147 girls in white gowns and mortarboards, walked distractedly among the people who were giving congratulations and taking snapshots. The benefactors had not appeared. “I’m dying,” she said.

At her home at 3 p.m., when relatives and friends gathered to celebrate, she and her mother thought perhaps there would be a telephone call from the patron.

By 3:30, Stephanie was walking nervously and occasionally wringing her hands. She wasn’t even in the house when Rick and Nancy Celia from up the street arrived with their three children, whom Stephanie regularly baby-sits. “Just a minute,” Maxine Scofield told them. “I’ll get Stephanie.”

The Celias had a graduation gift and card, but they also had a homemade scroll they wanted Stephanie to read. It was a sentimental poem about Stephanie, and when she reached the third stanza, her jaw fell and froze open.

She read to the end, then in a slightly hoarse voice said, “Oh, my God!” She burst into tears. “Thank you so much,” she sobbed. By now, Maxine Scofield was crying too. So were about a dozen others. The tears and embraces continued sporadically for another 15 minutes.

“You don’t even know what you’ve done for me,” Stephanie told the Celias.

“I can’t believe it,” Maxine Scofield said later. “They are good, good people. Exactly the sort of thing they’d do. But I had no idea.”

Said Nancy Celia after the hubbub died a bit: “I feel pretty good.”