GRATEFUL: The student’s father Larry Hollopeter (left) with hero Wesley Autrey.
More on the construction worker who leaped onto the subway tracks in today’s New York Times:

Mr. Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker, said he knew something was different when he showed up for work later on Tuesday. His boss, he said, bought him lunch — a ham-and-cheese hero — and later told him to take yesterday off.

Then yesterday morning, as he walked to his mother’s apartment in Harlem, “a stranger came up and put $10 in my hand,” he said. “People in my neighborhood were like, ‘Yo, I know this guy.’ ”

Once at his mother’s apartment, he held interviews in the living room with some of the national morning news programs.

After that, it was back to the scene, where he recounted Mr. Hollopeter’s backward tumble off the platform and into the path of the oncoming train.

Throughout the day, Mr. Autrey’s sister, Linda, 48, played the role of administrative assistant, logging invitations for the talk-show circuit, including requests from the David Letterman, Charlie Rose and Ellen DeGeneres shows. Phone calls from well-wishers came pouring in, including one from the mayor’s office. Mr. Autrey said he had been offered cash, trips and scholarships for his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, who watched as he dived to the trackbed.

“Donald Trump’s got a check waiting on me,” he said. “They offered to mail it; I said, ‘No, I’d like to meet the Donald, so I can say, Yo, you’re fired.’ ”

By the end of the day, the president of the New York Film Academy, Jerry Sherlock, had personally handed him a $5,000 check.