For most Coast Guardsmen, retirement is the finish line of a lifelong, answering-the-call career, but Jake Hamburg isn’t most Coast Guardsmen. When the executive petty officer post opened at Station Barnegat Light, he went for it, even though he’d only ever been to New Jersey twice: once for boot camp and again to drive through on his way out west.

“I was getting ready to retire in the fall and this opportunity presented itself.