SCRANTON (AP) — It has been nearly two decades since the workplace mockumentary “The Office” first set an episode inside a Chili’s, where Michael Scott handed out Dundie awards to his ever-tolerant employees, including trophies for the whitest sneakers and for stinking up the bathroom.

Over nine seasons, “The Office” regularly name-dropped real places and products associated with Scranton, where the Emmy-winning show was set. There’s the big pirate ship restaurant known as Cooper’s Seafood House and Poor Richard’s Pub inside a bowling alley. But in 2005, there was no Chili’s in the Pennsylvania city.

So, at last, the chain is filling a hole in Office lore by opening a Chili’s in Dickson City, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of Scranton.

New Chili’s, old look

The restaurant will be decorated as it would have been in the mid-2000s with old signs and chalkboard art. It will also feature direct nods to the show’s fictitious paper company, Dunder Mifflin. In one episode, Scott, played by Steve Carell, orders an awesome blossom — a deep-fried onion with a cheese dipping sauce — while trying to win a new client over lunch at Chili’s. That item, long struck from the Chili’s menu nationwide, is being reintroduced in the Scranton-area restaurant only.

The new Chili’s will open April 7, when a “Scranton marg” will be available nationwide for the day.

Two Office actors are appearing in commercials for the restaurant: Brian Baumgartner, who played the dimwitted accountant Kevin Malone; and Kate Flannery, whose character Meredith Palmer was a party-loving divorced mother working in supplier relations. Other actors, including Melora Hardin, Andy Buckley and Amy Pietz, also feature in a promotional video.

“It seems like a wrong was righted here at around the 20th anniversary of the show to finally have a Scranton branch of Chili’s,” Baumgartner told The Associated Press.

‘Beauty in ordinary things’

Decades ago, when word got out that an American version of the British show “The Office” would center on Scranton, some locals feared their hometown would be the butt of the joke. The Rust Belt town had its heyday generations earlier with anthracite coal mining and steam trains.

The show wound up celebrating Scranton and the characters, not poking fun at them, Baumgartner said.

Flannery, who is from Philadelphia, said she’s happy “The Office” helped to reinforce local pride in the city. Scranton has hosted large Office parties, including one that drew many cast members and some 10,000 people around the 2013 series finale. Streaming services have boosted the show’s popularity.

“It’s kind of like what Pam Beesly says in the last episode: there’s beauty in ordinary things. And Scranton can feel ordinary to some people,” Flannery told the AP. “But it’s really special. It really is.”

The show banked on residents and businesses to donate Scranton swag, and gave shout-outs to local landmarks. John Krasinski, who played Jim Halpert, filmed scenes for the opening montage in Scranton, making the city’s Penn Paper tower recognizable around the world. The “Scranton welcomes you” sign from Krasinski’s footage was moved to a downtown mall because people kept stopping on a highway to take photos.

‘I feel God in this Chili’s tonight’

For Chili’s, building a themed eatery that is expected to draw tourists isn’t the normal course of business, said George Felix, Chili’s chief marketing officer. In 2005, the nearest Chili’s was about 19 miles (30 kilometers) away from Scranton. It has since closed.

“Given the ties that this brand has to Scranton, this one was definitely special for us,” Felix told the AP.

Baumgartner, who analyzed the show in a podcast and book, said the new Chili’s calls back to a crucial episode — The Dundies — that kicked off Season 2, Baumgartner said.

“We were a failing show, quite frankly, with really bad ratings that first season and barely got brought back for a second,” Baumgartner said. “But some tonal things were changed. We decided to open that second season with kind of a bang, and left the office for the first time.”

In that episode, Pam Beesly, played by Jenna Fischer, won the “whitest sneakers” Dundie and declared tipsily, “I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.” Pam was subsequently banned from Chili’s nationwide for stealing people’s drinks. In 2017, Chili’s pardoned the character, saying she was welcome back.

“It’s going to feel like they’re actually on the show because it’s going to look exactly the same,” Flannery said of the Scranton-area Chili’s. “So it’s like a fan destination. It’s kind of awesome.”

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A pilot and his two young daughters survived on the wing of a plane for about 12 hours after it crashed and was partially submerged in an icy Alaska lake, then were rescued after being spotted by a good Samaritan.

Terry Godes said he saw a Facebook post Sunday night calling for people to help search for the missing plane, which did not have a locator beacon. On Monday morning about a dozen pilots including Godes headed out to scour the rugged terrain. Godes headed toward Tustumena Lake near the toe of a glacier and spotted what he thought was wreckage.

“It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there’s three people on top of the wing,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

After saying a prayer, he continued to approach and saw a miracle.

“They were alive and responsive and moving around,” Godes said, adding that they waved at him.

The missing Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, piloted by a man with two juvenile immediate family members aboard, was on a sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula. It was not immediately clear how old the juveniles were.

In a social media post early Monday, John Morris implored people to help search for his son and granddaughters, saying they were late returning from a Sunday afternoon flight.

“There are friends ready to search at daylight. But this is my plea for any and all help to locate my family,” he wrote.

The three were rescued on the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday by the Alaska Army National Guard after Godes alerted other searching pilots that he had found it. Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes’ radio call and related it to troopers since he was closer to Skilak Lake and figured he had better cell reception. He was also able to provide the plane’s coordinates to authorities.

“I wasn’t sure if we would find them, especially because there was a cloud layer over quite a bit of the mountains, so they could have very easily been in those clouds that we couldn’t get to,” Eicher said. But finding the family alive within an hour of starting the search “was very good news.”

The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Alaska State Troopers said.

Godes said many miracles were at play, from the plane not sinking, to the survivors being able to stay atop the wing, to them surviving nighttime temperatures dipping into the 20s (subzero Celsius).

“They spent a long, cold, dark, wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren’t planning on,” Godes said.

Alaska has few roads, leaving many communities to rely on small airplanes to get around.

Last month 10 people died when a small commuter plane that was overweight by half a ton crashed onto sea ice in the Norton Sound, near Nome on the state’s western coast.

And five years ago, a midair collision near the Soldotna airport claimed seven lives including that of a state lawmaker.

For this week’s rescue, the National Guard dispatched a helicopter from its base in Anchorage.

The initial plan of using a hoist to pluck them from the wing proved too dangerous, as the the smallest girl was being buffeted and blown around by the wind created by the helicopter, said Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment. So instead the aircraft hovered to the side and pulled them on board.

Personnel reported that the girls were surprisingly dry but the man had been in the water at some point, Holbrook said: “We don’t know to what extent, but he was hypothermic.”

Holbrook said he was told they had basic clothing one would wear on small planes without very good heating systems, but nothing sufficient to keep warm outside in wintry temperatures with cold winds blowing on the lake.

“It was literally the best possible scenario and outcome,” Holbrook said. “Ultimately the crew of that airplane were lucky, because from what my guys told me, that plane was in the ice with the tail refrozen, and if that tail hadn’t refrozen, it would have sunk.”

The 60,000-acre (24,200-hectare) Tustumena Lake, the largest freshwater body on the Kenai Peninsula, is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, with nearby mountains and a glacier.

It has been described by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as “notorious for its sudden, dangerous winds,” with conditions that can cause havoc for both boats and planes.

“The terrain helps turn the winds around, and occasionally they get a little squirrelly,” said Michael Kutz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Godes agreed that the area is always windy and the water can be whipped up into waves.

“Then just the way it’s placed right there at the heel of that, or at the toe of that glacier where you’ve got mountains on both sides, you know, just a few miles to the west, you’ve got Cook Inlet running back and forth with huge temperature and tidal swings every day,” he said. “It’s just a recipe for chaos and for turbulence.”

There was no indication yet why the plane crashed.

Mark Ward, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska division, said the pilot had not yet reported the accident, nor had the agency been able to contact him. Efforts were to be made again Wednesday to speak to him.

DENVER (AP) — A painting of Donald Trump hanging with other presidential portraits at the Colorado state Capitol will be taken down after Trump claimed that his was “purposefully distorted,” according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

House Democrats said in a statement that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the Legislature. Colorado Republicans raised more than $10,000 through a GoFundMe account to commission the oil painting, which was unveiled in 2019.

Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Republican, said that he requested for Trump’s portrait to be taken down and replaced by one “that depicts his contemporary likeness.”

“If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them,” the Democrats said.

The portrait was installed alongside other paintings of U.S. presidents. Before the installation, a prankster placed a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin near the spot intended for Trump.

Initially, people objected to artist Sarah Boardman’s depiction of Trump as “nonconfrontational” and “thoughtful” in the portrait, according to an interview with Colorado Times Recorder from the time.

But in a Sunday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he would prefer no picture at all over the one that hangs in the Colorado Capitol. The Republican lauded a nearby portrait of former President Barack Obama – also by Boardman – saying “he looks wonderful.”

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the state Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote.

The portraits are not the purview of the Colorado governor’s office but the Colorado Building Advisory Committee. The ones up to and including President Jimmy Carter were donated as a collection. The others were donated by political parties or, more recently, paid for by outside fundraising.

The Legislature’s executive committee, made up of both Democratic and Republican leadership, signed a letter directing the removal of Trump’s portrait. Lundeen, the Republican senator who requested it, noted that Grover Cleveland, whose presidential terms were separated like Trump’s, had a portrait from his second term.

Boardman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. In interviews from the time with The Denver Post, Boardman said it was important that her depictions of both Obama and Trump looked apolitical.

“There will always be dissent, so pleasing one group will always inflame another. I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and nonconfrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time,” Boardman told the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019.

Trump’s Sunday night comments had prompted a steady stream of visitors to pose for photos with the painting before the announcement that it would be taken down.

Aaron Howe, visiting from Wyoming on Monday, stood in front of Trump’s portrait, looking down at photos of the president on his phone, then back up at the portrait.

“Honestly he looks a little chubby,” said Howe of the portrait, but “better than I could do.”

“I don’t know anything about the artist,” said Howe, who voted for Trump. “It could be taken one way or the other.”

Kaylee Williamson, an 18-year-old Trump supporter from Arkansas, got a photo with the portrait.

“I think it looks like him. I guess he’s smoother than all the other ones,” she said. “I think it’s fine.”