To say that Bill Dehn—a Waterloo resident who works as a mechanic at Chelsea’s Side Street Garage—was taken aback by his recent brief appearance on the NBC comedy “30 Rock” would be an understatement.

“I don’t watch (’30 Rock’) at all,” said Dehn. who appeared as part of a short mock commercial for American Kouches in last week's episode. “My coworker Peter—he saw (me) when it aired and told me about it.”

The commercial—a parody of Chrysler's Halftime in America ad, starring Clint Eastwood, which aired during the Super Bowl—features Stacy Keach championing the Kabletown-owned couch company that emphasizes that it’s product is made in America, and Dehn is one of a handful of workers shown in a montage.

Dehn appears about 14 seconds into the first of these three American Kouch commercials.

In addition to Dehn’s co-worker, Dehn’s wife’s friend in Hawaii spotted the local mechanic, as did a cousin in Chicago; but to see the clip for himself, Dehn had to go online.

“It’s been kind of weird,” Dehn said of the experience. “I was just surprised.”

According to Dehn, the footage that appeared on the show was shot 4 or 5 years ago by Chelsea photographer Andy Sax.

“I’ve been supplying Getty Images with footage and still photos for decades, since the late ‘80s,” said Sax. “ … The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker are tried and true themes. … And I’d been a customer there at Side Street. I thought the garage itself had a lot of texture, and I mentioned that to Dan (Hoffenbecker, Side Street's owner), and asked if I could come down and film clips of the guys working on cars.”

Sax didn’t see the footage he shot when it originally aired on “30 Rock,” either, but later learned about it from Hoffenbecker.

“I probably shot about 50 different angles and scenes at the garage, and (Getty) probably featured the top 20 of those on their site with keywords,” said Sax. “The keywords are the magic ingredient. Because a researcher or someone else looking for a clip just punches in a keyword for the subject matter they want. … I don’t know what NBC was looking for, but it would be interesting to chase down the line producer or someone else and find out what brought them to the footage of our Bill Dehn.”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.