Life Underground: Chilean Miner 'Super Mario' Speaks

He explained meaning behind rocks and admiring President Sebastian Pinera.

ByABC News
October 17, 2010, 9:25 PM

Oct. 18, 2010 — -- Mario Sepulveda, the master of ceremonies on the videos that made the Chilean miners world famous, was the second miner to emerge from the rescue capsule Wednesday.

Though many of the 33 Chilean miners have agreed to keep the details of the 69-day ordeal a secret, others have started to share their reflections and insights.

Sepulveda spent much of this weekend falling in love again with his wife, Katty, and dancing with his daughter, Scarlette. When ABC News came to visit, he read from the goodbye letter he'd written for his son, Franco, when he thought he was going to die.

"I will miss you, son," he wrote. "But I am tranquil and happy, because as I leave this earth, I know you will be in the good hands of your mother."

In his first TV interview since leaving the mine, Sepulveda, 40, said that he feared leaving his kids and wife alone.

"That was a familiar thought," he said. "But every time I thought of that, I immediately returned to where I was."

After being rescued, Sepulveda ran, yelling and cheering and hugging everyone in sight. The world media quickly nicknamed him "Super Mario."

He told ABC News that he admired President Sebastian Pinera for his efforts in rescuing "Los Treinta y Tres" -- those 33 men.

"I believed in our president," he said an hour after being released from the hospital. "He is forceful and he's rich. Nobody has given him what he has. He's a workaholic."

Sepulveda was so overwhelmed with emotion after he emerged from the mine that at first he didn't recognize Pinera. "I looked for everyone and then I realized I am in front of our president," Sepulveda said.

"It was so emotional to hug the president that I repeated it twice more because really our president played a fundamental role, and it was very humane of him to put in place the technology and resources to make the rescue possible."