probably too late for you @RyanHenderson, but if someone else comes across this; the appropriate way to do this is to use the collectionAccess module:
var collectionAccess = modules.collectionAccess;
creatorId = collectionAccess.objectID(entity._acl.creator);
collectionAccess.collection('user').findOne({"_id" : creatorId}, function (err, userColl) {
// ..do stuff with userColl
});