It took fellow cast members as well as ordinary Washingtonians to reunite Hamilton actor Trevor Miles with his lost dog on Tuesday. “Everybody’s community effort and hard work paid off,” Miles tells Washingtonian. “It was such a roller coaster.”
The off-stage drama began Saturday afternoon when a fellow castmember of the hit musical—which is now playing at the Kennedy Center—was walking Miles’s two-year-old pit bull, Luna, by the intersection of Rock Creek Parkway and Virginia Avenue, according to WUSA9. According to Miles, who is 29, a car ran a red light and hit the castmember, sending him into the air and causing injuries. “He is missing a chunk of hair on his head,” Miles says.
In the aftermath of the accident, Luna bolted away. And while the castmember chased after the dog, he was ultimately stopped by bystanders who insisted that he seek medical attention. The castmember went to the hospital but was later released.
Miles, who adopted Luna from a shelter in Los Angeles in 2019, has grown particularly close with his dog due to the transient nature of his work, which often requires him to move from one city to the next. “She has really been such a rock for me and has been home on the road,” he says.
As soon as they learned of Luna’s disappearance, members of the Hamilton team pitched in to help. The company manager filed a missing dog report and printed up flyers. Hamilton’s head of security organized a search party consisting mainly of locals. Fellow Hamilton castmembers helped distribute signs. “And then I started posting on social media and it kind of just took off,” Miles says.
On Sunday night, Miles got his first lead. He was contacted by a woman who said she and two other concerned citizens had found Luna near George Washington University hospital on Saturday, the day the dog went missing. The woman told Miles that they had called the Humane Society but were told that animal control would not be able to pick up for dog for an hour or so. Since none of them were in a position to wait that long—the woman was on her way to work, and the two other concerned citizens were from out of town—they agreed to turn the dog over to a group of three young women who offered to care for Luna until the owner was located. “One of them said that their dad was a vet,” Miles says, “and that they could take her in.”
Though Miles was relieved to learn that Luna had been spotted, he grew concerned when no one from the group of young women who had apparently taken possession of Luna had reached out to him by Monday. “Things were’t really adding up,” he says, “so I kind of go into full detective mode.” As part of his search, Miles returned to the area near George Washington University and approached a security officer at a building in the hopes of obtaining surveillance camera footage that could shed light on what happened to Luna. “I am telling [the security officer] the story and they go, ‘Oh, I was working that night and I happened to see this happening,’” Miles says. “He said, ‘Oh, two of those girls were coworkers of mine. They’ll be working tonight, you can come back and speak to them.’”
That evening, Miles returned to the building—which he declined to identify—to talk to the two women. “It was a really difficult, defensive conversation,” he says. “They just kept saying, ‘All I know is I didn’t take the dog. I didn’t take the dog.’ They were kind of evading.” At one point during the conversation, according to Miles, one of the two young women admitted that she did know who had the dog. “Luckily, I had my friend there with me who was like a little bit more level-headed than me, because I was very frustrated at this point,” Miles says. “And my friend just goes, ‘If you know who it is, just take this information and tell them they can turn her in anywhere. [Luna] has a chip. You can take this flyer.’ Just basically giving them an out because it was clear they didn’t want to reveal some sort of information to us.”
Sure enough, the following morning, Tuesday, Miles received a Facebook message from a worker at a local animal hospital who said that a dog fitting Luna’s description had been picked up by the Fairfax County Animal Shelter. Later that day, Miles and Luna were finally reunited.
And, here’s video of Trevor’s reunion with Luna. Here’s your opportunity to happily shed some tears, DC. (@wusa9) pic.twitter.com/2mZRzuPT6J
— John Henry (@JohnHenryWUSA) August 9, 2022
Miles said he was overcome with relief to have Luna back, and he expressed appreciation for the assistance of his new neighbors. “It has been such an incredible experience in so many ways,” he says. “In a really roundabout way, it has really reaffirmed how grateful I am to be here and how excited I am to experience the city.”
Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.
