Real-life Megan Leavey talks about the Marines and Sgt. Rex

Five years ago, lifelong Yankee fan and Rockland County native Megan Leavey set foot on the field at Yankee Stadium wearing the dress blues of a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps and gripping the leash of a tough-as-nails German shepherd named Sgt. Rex. 

She was being honored by the team after winning the biggest fight of her civilian life — a battle against military red tape that was preventing her from adopting the dog she had fallen in love with.

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The beloved bomb-sniffing K-9 was Leavey’s constant companion during her time in the Marines. They went on more than 100 missions in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, looking for explosives that could maim or kill their fellow Marines, before they were both nearly killed by an improvised explosive device near Ramadi.

She misses Sgt. Rex, who lived well but not long — “a great eight months,” she says — in suburban comfort in her Valley Cottage home before he died in December 2012.

Rex may be gone, but his memory and the story of how Leavey fought to be reunited with her Marine Corps K-9 partner lives on in the Bleecker Street-LD Entertainment  movie “Megan Leavey,” which opens in theaters June 9.

Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the drama stars Westchester native Kate Mara as Leavey. Mara played Zoe Barnes in the Netflix series “House of Cards” and Sue Storm in the 2015 movie “Fantastic Four." Leavey has a quick cameo appearance in the film as a drill sergeant who gets in Mara’s face. 

“I’m really happy," the petite, blonde Leavey tells The Journal News/lohud.com in an interview done not far from her home. "They did a good job, and I hope people enjoy it.”

Although the film embroiders the story for dramatic effect, Leavey says “I think the true message comes through — the bond and partnership between me and Rex and how important it was.”

The memories are still raw for Leavey, who says that the first time she saw the finished movie, she was “the one in the back of the theater, sobbing.”

The cast also includes Edie Falco and Bradley Whitford as Leavey's parents, Ellyn and Bill Leavey. Ramon Rodriguez and rapper Common are also in the cast.

“It’s an honor to play this person that I admire so much,” said Mara, who like Leavey was born in 1983. “I’ve always been fascinated by Marines and people who join the Marine Corps. They’re just so courageous to me, so I’ve always sort of dreamt of playing a Marine. … That was a real joy for me.”

Mara calls Leavey’s story “so inspiring. I think it’s such a testament to never giving up on fighting for something you believe in and something you know is right. It doesn’t just pertain to this specific story. I think people can relate to that in all walks of life.”

Nyack High School to Paris Island

Leavey’s march to the military began not long after she graduated in 2001 from Nyack High School, where she was a softball standout in high school, and entered the State University of New York at Cortland.

It was a heady time, she says. “My first month away from home, in college, 9/11 happens. That had a really big impact on my life. … It threw off everything that I felt like I was supposed to be doing. And I just thought there’s a bigger picture in the world.”

She says she essentially flunked out in her freshman year and returned to Rockland to take a shot at being a commuter student at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill. The result was the same: “I was just not into it.”

So she ended up working next to the military recruiting station in Nanuet.

"Finally, one day I was like, I’ll just go in," she said. "I just made my mind up: If I’m going to do this, let me really just go all in. I hear the Marines is the hardest branch, so if I’m going in, I’m gonna go for it all the way."

She made it through boot camp at Paris Island and moved on to Military Police school in Texas, where she joined the K-9 program and was paired with Sgt. Rex. 

The Marine and dog quickly forged a bond that lasted long after the war-zone blast of an IED that left Leavey with hearing loss, brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and Sgt. Rex with a damaged shoulder and neurological ailments.

Leaving Sgt. Rex

After a year at Camp Pendleton in California in which she and Rex went through intense rehabilitation, Leavey was honorably discharged. She asked to take Rex with her, but was denied because the Marines still needed him.

The parting hurt. “Rex was my comfort for so long — and to not have that any more, it was hard for me,” Leavey said.

She never gave up hope. She checked on Rex regularly.

After four years, Leavey learned that Rex’s health was failing and he wasn’t going to be able to continue his military service — a situation that would certainly end in euthanization.

“I got a phone call —that person always wants to remain anonymous – and they were like, listen, this is going on. If you are going to do something, you should probably do it soon. He’s not in a good way,” Leavey said.

She immediately resolved to renew her adoption request but didn’t know where to start.

Enter Jerry Donnellan, director of the Rockland County Veterans Service Agency.

“I just felt like if anybody, he was the guy to go to in Rockland that could at least point me in the right direction. I was right. ...

“I went into his office and I was crying. And he was like, ‘Wow, this problem has never come up before. This is a first. ...

“He’s the one that kind of set everything up and pointed me in the right direction. … We put a whole packet together and that’s how that all came about, going to Sen. [Chuck] Schumer, and getting out in the press, and making it public, and getting everyone on my side and showing so much support,” she said.  

Leavey said she was careful not to get too combative. “I love the Marine Corps. I don’t want to cause a big thing, I just want to adopt my dog. He’s not well and I feel like he deserves that care.”

Donnellan is modest about his contribution.

“I saw the bureaucracy she was running into and I helped," he said, by involving Sen. Charles Schumer — “the biggest horse in the neighborhood.”

“I was very proud to play a small role in helping to expedite Megan’s adoption of Rex,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said recently at a screening of the film. “My amazing staff helped circulate a petition supporting Megan’s efforts that eventually got over 20,000 signatures, and we put pressure on the federal government and the military to expedite the adoption.”

The Yankees jumped in after Mindy Franklin Levine saw a TV news report and persuaded her husband, Yankees President Randy Levine, to join in the cause by lobbying for the adoption and helping defray the costs of transporting Rex to the East Coast and his medical care.

Mindy Levine calls Leavey “a very generous person in every respect… I just absolutely fell in love with her, adding that she’s “grateful to the Marines — they sent me a daughter.”

Levine, who helped pitch the Leavey movie to Hollywood, also is co-writing Leavey’s memoir.

Leavey hopes the book, like the movie, will help anyone who follows in her footsteps.

““I’m sure there’s somebody else in my shoes somewhere in the military," she said. "If I just put this out there and just help somebody else to be able to get their dog back a little bit easier without such stress, I’m for that.“