Attaching functionality to the modal's trigger

[jasonmorehead]

I've got a modal where I'm trying to get information and/or manipulate the modal's trigger (like add a class to it). In the modal's JS, I have a line that looks like this:

hash.w.addClass('foo');

This line attaches the "foo" class to the modal element when the modal is triggered.

Based on this, I thought I could do something similar to add the "foo" class to the triggering element, like so:

hash.t.addClass('foo');

However, this generates the following error:

Uncaught TypeError: hash.t.addClass is not a function

Is there a way to manipulate the modal's trigger, or perform other jQuery functions on it, like get the value of any "data" attributes that it might have?