While his pals made it just a couple feet each before falling -- see right -- Q made it all the way across, proudly wearing his FDNY t-shirt.

"As horrible as it sounds, I knew if I didn't make it across, I would be made fun of to no end by these guys," Quinn said. "Maybe if I wasn't wearing that t-shirt, I wouldn't have felt that way."

He presented his $50,000 check to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation on Tuesday at his old firehouse. The organization has partnered with the FDNY to build houses and provide other services to military personnel and first responders.

"This was just the biggest way I could help," Quinn said of the donation.

Quinn gets misty when he talks about the fire department and how it still fills a big place in his heart. It's a rare moment of seriousness for a self-proclaimed jokester. Outside, firefighters debate whether he'll ever be back, or if the show has turned him into too much of a celebrity.

"I'd like to see him come back, but this is a once in a lifetime experience," said McHale.

McHale, who served as Quinn's mentor after he graduated from the fire academy, said the show always seemed like a good fit for Quinn, although some of the pranks on the hidden camera show looked an awful lot like the ones the Staten Island firefighters would pull on one another -- like the old Supermarket Balloon Assault.

"I told him, 'What, were you running out of material?'" McHale joked as he watched his old friend shake hands with the foundation's officers.

Quinn still lives on Staten Island, in Great Kills where he's always lived. His parents have moved to Florida and he has other kin scattered around the country. But he's still got family here, he said.

"These guys are my family now."