Former Major League Baseball player Eliezer Alfonzo is desperately searching for his wife and teenage daughter, who remain missing after last week’s deadly twin earthquakes in Venezuela.

Alfonzo, a former catcher who played for the San Francisco Giants and other MLB teams, has joined rescue efforts at the site of a collapsed hotel in Macuto, La Guaira state, where his family was staying when the earthquakes struck on June 24.

According to him, his wife, Patricia Alejandra, and their 16-year-old daughter, Eliana Patricia, were on the fourth floor of the hotel at the time of the disaster.

The earthquakes, among the deadliest in Latin America’s recent history, have claimed more than 2,600 lives, while thousands of people are still unaccounted for. Hundreds of buildings, including apartment blocks and hotels, were reduced to rubble.

Hope for the family grew after rescuers found the family’s three-month-old dog alive beneath the debris on Friday. The dog’s barking reportedly helped emergency teams identify an area where survivors could still be trapped.

Alfonzo said the discovery strengthened his belief that his wife and daughter may still be alive, noting that rescue teams have continued using specially trained dogs and life-detection equipment at the site.

Before international rescue teams arrived, miners from Bolívar state helped search through the wreckage by digging tunnels into the collapsed eight-storey building.

The 47-year-old said his family had planned to accompany him to a game involving the Delfines de La Guaira, the Venezuelan professional baseball club he manages, before the earthquakes changed everything.

Despite the difficult conditions, Alfonzo said he remains determined to stay at the site until every effort has been made to find his loved ones.