Ember: Access ember data 'store' object from utility class

I have a utility class for validating usernames in my ember application and have it setup as specified in the ember-cli docs. I do client-side username validation in several places in my application (components and controllers) so I wanted to pull the validation logic out into a reusable method.

The file is at /app/utils/username-validator.js and I can successfully include the file in my app by importing it like so: import usernameValidator from 'my-app/utils/username-validator';

This works great so far and I've used the pattern for several utility classes. The problem I'm running into now is that I'd like the username-validator method to include a check to see if the username already exists.

As I am using Ember-Data I'd like to check the Ember-Data store. By default, the store appears to only be accessible in controllers and routes. How can I make it accessible in my utility class? All the injection examples I've seen deal with injecting the store into other first class Ember objects like components.

Is it possible to inject the store into a simple utility class as well?

Thank you!

I am using the following versions:

Ember-cli v0.2.6
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: -------------------------------
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: Ember             : 1.12.0
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: Ember Data        : 1.0.0-beta.18
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: jQuery            : 1.11.3
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: Ember Simple Auth : 0.8.0-beta.2
ember.debug.js:4888 DEBUG: -------------------------------