Looks like I answered my own question....the magic of closures! I knew this Secrets of the Javascript Ninjas book would come in handy! I basically created a function inside of the Dropzone init function that returned the instance of dz and assigned it to an outer variable. In the modal's edit button click event I call a web service to retrieve my images and the inner function returning my dz instance. I then use that instance to load the pictures via the wiki link code.
If anyone has this same issue and wants to see code, let me know!