6 Miner Families Wait With Shared Hope

Manuel Sanchez, 42, is among the 6 trapped miners identified by ABC News.

ByABC News
January 8, 2009, 12:32 AM

Aug. 9, 2007 — -- As rescue crews drilled to within a few hundred feet of the six miners trapped in Utah's Crandall Canyon mine, their families wait and worry.

"I'm just praying and hoping that they make contact," Lucile A. Erickson, the mother of Don L. Erickson, a longtime worker at the mine, told ABCNEWS.com. "He's a great person, good heart, he likes to fish and hunt."

Don Erickson, 50, a father of two sons and several stepchildren, was the boss of the crew that day because he had agreed to substitute for another worker, said his mother. "He kind of filled in for another guy who took off to take a class that day," she said.

Erickson never complained to his mother about conditions at the mine, despite some near cave-ins. She said that mine owner Bob Murray was talking to the families every day. Asked whether Murray had been a big source of support during this difficult time, she said, "No, but I don't want to get into it." She added that the authorities and rescue crews are "doing all they can."

ABC News has confirmed the identities of all six miners. In addition to Erickson, the other five are Manuel Sanchez, 42; Kerry Allred, 57; Brandon Phillips, 43; Carlos Payan, Luis Hernandez.

Sanchez, one of three Mexican nationals among the trapped miners, has three daughters and a son. The longtime miner's nephew Julio said that the family was waiting and hoping for the best. "I'm worried."

Raymond Rivas, 20, is friends with Sanchez's daughter, 16-year-old Arianna. "He's our next-door neighbor. He was a good guy, really nice, a good father. I only talked to him a few times. &133; He's worked at the mine for a long time."

Some of the Mexican nationals may be illegal immigrants, according to Barbara Stinson Lee, a spokeswoman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City who talked to the Rocky Mountain News. She reportedly asked photographers not to take pictures of families who attended a Mass Tuesday night.

"It is a request from the families that there be no photographs. It's not grief. It's an immigration issue. They don't need pictures on the front page of newspapers," Lee told the News.

Yet mine owner Bob Murray insisted during an afternoon news conference that all of his employees were legal.