Jakobi Hagar poses for a photo in Damariscotta on June 2. Hagar, of Newcastle, is a three-time state wrestling champion and plans to add a fourth title during his senior year at Lincoln Academy. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
At the age of 16 Jakobi Hagar has three businesses and holds three state wrestling championship titles.
And he’s just getting started.
Hagar grew up in the Twin Villages. His parents divorced when he was young and he currently lives with his mother and stepfather in Newcastle. He has a brother, two stepbrothers and a 9-year-old half-brother Will, who was diagnosed with Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects the brain, immune system, and skin. Will lives with Hagar’s father Justin in Freeport.
Jakobi Hagar attended Great Salt Bay Community School and has just completed his junior year at Lincoln Academy. He is not a three-season athlete – wrestling is the one sport he puts his energy into.
He owes his wrestling success in no small part to his mother Chastity Krah, who got him started when he was in second grade.
“I think a big part of why I wrestle is for my mom,” he said. “She loves watching me wrestle. No one cheers louder than my mom.”
It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with the sport too.
“I love everything it teaches you; I love everything about it,” he said. “And I love putting myself in uncomfortable situations. I love learning from them.”
Jakobi Hagar credits former Lincoln Academy coach Shawn St. Cyr for starting him on his path to winning championships.
“The first one was euphoric,” he said of his freshman year win.
That year he was one of three Lincoln Academy wrestlers crowned Class B state champions.
“I was very fortunate to have a good team behind me,” he said. “I had Jayden Lafrenaye and Adam St. Cyr, both state champs as well. They were my drilling partners … I couldn’t have done it without them.”
He won again in his sophomore year. In 2025 when Drew Guttentag took over coaching the team Jakobi Hagar won his third state title. He intends to end his wrestling career next year with a fourth.
Jakobi Hagar comes by his drive and ambition honestly. The Hagar name is well known in Lincoln County. Hagar Enterprises Inc., started by his grandfather Mark, has been paving and plowing the roads of Lincoln County and the state since 1987. Jakobi Hagar grew up in the business.
“I’ve always been involved, ever since I was little, always in the excavator with my father,” he said. “I started working in the summers full time when I was 12 years old and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
It’s a lot to live up to, and despite his youth, Jakobi Hagar thinks often about the mark he plans to leave on the world. That looking ahead, that concept of legacy, comes not only from upholding the family name but also from a family history of loss and tragedy.
“Tomorrow’s not always promised, so I just want to know at the end of the day, I gave it everything I could,” he said.
Last year he was dealt a hard blow by the death of his stepgrandfather, Tony Tozier, a man Jakobi Hagar said entered his life unexpectedly but whom he looked up to and hopes to emulate.
“We weren’t blood related, but he was married to my grandmother. He was always there when you needed him,” he said. “Doesn’t matter how deep in the mud he was – he could be up to his neck. He would crawl out and he would help you finish or start what you’re trying to do.”
There had been other losses in his family when he was younger, losses he never felt he was able to fully grasp or understand – his great-grandmother, a couple of great-uncles. Then in 2018 when he was 8, he lost his aunt, Kathryn “Katie” Hagar, to suicide. Katie Hagar raced cars competitively and set records not just at the Wiscasset Speedway but on the NASCAR circuit as well.
“There’s always stuff going on behind the scenes that nobody ever realizes,” he said.
Despite being so young at the time of her death, Jakobi Hagar still remembers and admires his aunt’s spirit and the things she was able to accomplish.
Jakobi Hagar (left) faces off against a wrestler from Oxford Hills during a Jan. 7 match at Lincoln Academy in Newcastle. Hagar, a three-time state champion, won the match. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
“I don’t mean to swear but she was a (expletive),” Jakobi Hagar said. “She was super hardcore, you know? She gave 100% in everything she did.”
The idea of giving 100% is core to his own personal philosophy as well.
“I’m always going to bite off more than I can chew,” he said. “And I’ll figure out how to chew it later.”
Jakobi Hagar no longer works for Hagar Enterprises, but that’s because he’s focused on growing businesses of his own.
Last year as a sophomore he started a mobile car detailing business called The Detail Dude, finding clients through Facebook posts and neighborhood groups.
“I was working every day at it. I made business cards, put yard signs around town, and met up with business owners,” he said.
He prides himself on the 26 five-star reviews that are a testament to the work he put in. For Jakobi Hagar success is all about discipline.
“Discipline is always going to be that backbone that you need to have. Motivation fluctuates,” he said.
While he doesn’t consider himself “a car guy” – he drives a Ford F-150 – The Detail Dude is Jakobi Hagar’s primary focus. He can be found soaping and scrubbing cars and trucks almost every day in the summer.
“It’s a process, you know? It could be the cleanest car in the world or the dirtiest car in the world, I still run through the same process every time,” he said.
He keeps the price consistent as well – the same for every car.
Jakobi Hagar has spent the last year learning everything he can about detailing: what chemicals to use; how to protect the paint; that 1,000 grams per square inch is the best weight for the microfiber cloths he uses to buff vehicles.
When his family took a vacation to Florida, he researched detailers in the area and found a business called Car Candy.
“They deal with million dollar yachts. They’re doing high-end super cars,” he said. “So you walk in and they have all these experts there. And chemicals you’ve never seen in your life … These guys are the best of the best.”
He took advantage of the opportunity to talk to the experts in the industry, bringing home new skills and new cleaning products. His ambitions for The Detail Dude include that higher-end spectrum of body work, tinting, and ceramic coatings.
“There’s a lot of money in that,” he said, adding that very few places in Maine offer those services.
In addition to his work as the Detail Dude, Jakobi Hagar has both a site preparation business that readies lots for construction and a small junk removal business. For him, work isn’t a hobby or a temporary means of making a little extra cash. He’s already thinking bigger.
“I got into detailing because, honestly, I don’t like working for other people. I see a lot of value in building something for yourself,” he said. “Kids in the summer like to get away from school, go to the beach. I like to work. That’s just kind of how I grew up … I’m looking into the future, you know? I’m looking long term.”
Jakobi Hagar washes a 2025 Vanadium Grey Metallic Porsche Cayman GTS 4.0 for a client of The Detail Dude, his mobile detailing business, in Newcastle on June 12. Hagar said hes not that much of a car enthusiast but he may still take his client up on an offer to teach him to drive a stick shift. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
That long-term vision, however, does not include college, even though his mother would love to watch him wrestle at the collegiate level.
While he thinks “it’s absolutely important for people to finish high school” and graduating is part of his plan, “school is not my number one priority in the grand scheme of things,” Jakobi Hagar said.
Growing up in the age of artificial intelligence has given him tools that he believes can serve him as well or better than lessons learned in school.
“As long as I get the basics … I think I’ll be all right,” he said.
He foresees a lot of benefit from AI when it comes to building a business. He already uses it to help with site work design and to ensure his email communication is professional.
“I think it takes a lot of burden off young entrepreneurs,” he said.
Jakobi Hagar plans to take a couple years after he graduates to fully establish himself, to set his businesses up to be successful without his day-to-day involvement, and then he will pursue another long-held ambition – joining the Marine Corps.
“They make up a very small percentage (of the armed forces),” he said of the Corps. “They are the few. They are the proud.”
And for Jakobi Hagar, joining up is important. He wants to serve, to protect his country and the people he loves, to “play his part,” he said. He has several family members who served, including his mother, who was an air traffic controller with the Navy. He’s already talking to recruiters, mapping out how the Corps fits into his life after high school.
But for now he’s focused on what he can accomplish before he graduates, even though he’s frustrated at times when people don’t take him seriously because of his youth. And he worries about the future that exists outside his control.
“I am the upcoming generation. What happens now definitely sets the tone for the future and impacts me,” he said. “But right now, where I’m at, being 16? My opinion doesn’t mean anything, you know? Whatever I post or say doesn’t change anything. Until I’m 18 and at the age that I can vote. Then I matter.”
Until then there’s work. And there’s wrestling.
“I mean it really just sets you up for life, you know? Nothing’s going to be harder than going out on the mat for those 6 minutes and wrestling your life away,” Jakobi Hagar said. “And then you get off and you’re like, ‘OK, everything else in life seems a lot easier now.’”
(Bisi Cameron Yee is a freelance photojournalist and reporter based in Nobleboro. To contact her, email cameronyeephotography@gmail.com. Do you have a suggestion for a “Characters of the County” subject? Email info@lcnme.com with the subject line “Characters of the County” with the name and contact information of your nominee.)
