Firefighter Rob Wonfor describes himself as a “bit of a monkey,” and on Wednesday morning, those climbing skills came in handy when he rescued a woman perched on a crane high above a downtown Toronto construction site.

In a dramatic early-morning scene that played out in front of a fascinated crowd of onlookers both within the city and, online, around the world, Wonfor brought the woman to the ground just before 8:30 a.m., after a 2 ½ hour rescue operation just east of the Wellesley subway station, near Church St.

A crowd of hundreds snapped photos and cheered Wonfor, a 52-year-old acting captain, after he placed the woman in a safety harness and rappelled down from the crane’s block with her in his arms.

The woman appeared calm while she was on the crane, sitting with her hands folded in her lap and swinging her feet. When Wonfor got her safely to the ground, she was handcuffed and led to a stretcher, then loaded into an ambulance and taken away.

Marisa Lazo, 23, has been charged with six counts of public mischief, police said Wednesday night. She will remain in police custody until she appears in court Thursday.

Wonfor was checked out briefly by paramedics before speaking to reporters at the scene, where he described Lazo as “a brave girl.”

“She said, ‘I just want to get down,’ ” Wonfor said. “She was great.”

It wasn’t immediately clear why Lazo had gone up the crane, and the firefighter said “we didn’t get into discussing that.”

The angle of the crane made the height at which Lazo was trapped difficult to estimate, but Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg said the block on which she was perched was at least 12 storeys above the ground.

Wonfor was calm after the ordeal, quipping, “I moisturize,” when asked by reporters about his age.

Asked how he got the assignment, he said, “I was volun-told: ‘You’re going up.’ ”

Wonfor also had praise for the Toronto police Emergency Task Force negotiator who scaled the crane along with him and talked to both the firefighter and Lazo to help them remain calm.

“He was like a late-night talk show host, the way he talked, kept her really calm,” Wonfor said, comparing the police officer’s voice to that of the late legendary crooner Perry Como.

The initial plan was for Wonfor to climb up to the crane’s block and make sure Lazo didn’t fall as it was lowered to a patch of grass in the nearby Paul Kane House Parkette.

But shortly after 8 a.m., concerns about lowering the block with two people on it prompted a change in plan. Instead, Wonfor placed Lazo in a safety harness and secured her to him before rappelling to the ground below.

“It takes a lot of dexterity . . . as our rescuers get cold, it gets harder on them,” said Pegg, who described Wonfor as “one of our best.”

The incident began at about 4 a.m., when police got a call that a person had been spotted on the crane.

The woman had apparently climbed on to the top of the crane, and then lowered herself onto the block using the cable from which it is suspended, Insp. Colin Greenaway said.

According to Pegg, a senior captain passed him following Lazo’s successful rescue and told him: “You know, there isn’t a textbook for this, but I’m pretty sure we just wrote it.”

Wonfor told reporters he didn’t want to be late for his 11 a.m. hockey game where he plays goalie. In the locker-room, he got a call from Don Cherry, the outspoken legend of Coach’s Corner.

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“I just want to thank you,” Wonfor says Cherry told him. “You’re my type of guys here. Like the soldiers, like troopers, the police, the firefighters — guys. Boy, that was something. I know one thing, I’d never get that high and God love you and keep up the good work.”

A woman who says she grew up with Lazo but hasn’t been in contact with her in recent years told the Star she remembers Lazo as a climber.

“She just likes to climb things,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified. “Me and her used to climb everything when we were children . . . I used to be scared of it (but) she wasn’t.”

She said that, to her knowledge, Lazo has never been in trouble with the law before.

“She’s completley normal. She lives a normal life,” she said.