- Former Major League Baseball catcher Eliezer Alfonzo is personally digging through the ruins of a collapsed eight-story hotel in Macuto to find his missing wife and daughter.
- The family’s three-month-old puppy, Mila, was rescued alive from the wreckage on Friday after her barking alerted international rescue teams and local gold miners.
- The devastating twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, 2026, have claimed more than 2,600 lives, leaving thousands more missing across the hardest-hit coastal areas.
Former Major League Baseball catcher Eliezer Alfonzo is leading a desperate, personal rescue mission following the devastating twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela last week.
Eko Hot Blog reports that the 47-year-old former athlete, well-known for his time with the San Francisco Giants and several other prominent major league franchises, has spent agonizing days digging through a massive mountain of pulverized rubble in Macuto, a coastal town in La Guaira state.
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He is driven by the singular hope of finding his wife and teenage daughter, who remain trapped beneath the flattened ruins of what was once an eight-story hotel.
The catastrophe, which struck on June 24, 2026, has left an indelible scar on the South American nation. Official reports confirm that more than 2,600 people have lost their lives and thousands more remain unaccounted for, making it one of the most severe seismic disasters in modern Latin American history.
For Alfonzo, the tragedy is deeply personal and immediate. His 16-year-old daughter, Eliana Patricia, and his wife, Patricia Alejandra, were on the fourth floor of the hotel when the powerful twin shocks brought the structure crashing down.
They had been getting ready to accompany him to a baseball game for the Delfines de La Guaira, the Venezuelan Major Professional Baseball League team that Alfonzo currently manages, when the earth violently shook.
A profound glimmer of hope emerged on Friday afternoon when searchers located the family’s three-month-old puppy, Mila.
The young dog was pulled alive from the twisted wreckage after her faint barking alerted a combined force of local rescuers and American international aid workers to a possible pocket of survival within the dense debris.
Speaking to international news agency reporters at the scene, an emotional but remarkably composed Alfonzo expressed his unwavering conviction that his family is still holding on somewhere deep beneath the surface.
He remarked that if their tiny puppy managed to survive the initial collapse and the days that followed, his daughter and wife, whom he described as incredibly resilient individuals, could also be waiting for rescue.
The scale of destruction across La Guaira state is truly immense, with nearly 200 major structures, including vast residential complexes and commercial buildings, entirely leveled by the powerful shocks.
The local community has rallied together in extraordinary ways; before the arrival of specialized American rescue teams, a group of 20 gold miners from the southern town of Tumeremo in Bolívar state traveled to the site, utilizing their unique expertise to tunnel through the unstable, collapsed layers of concrete and metal in a frantic bid to reach potential survivors.
In recent hours, high-tech life-detection tests and highly trained rescue K9 units have indicated potential signs of life deep within the ruins.
Alfonzo, who originally debuted in the Major Leagues in 2006 and spent six seasons competing at the sport’s highest level, has vowed to remain at the site and dig alongside the emergency crews until the very end, stating with profound determination that he will continue to believe they are alive until he can finally hold them in his arms once again.
