”I knew from the time I was a teenager I wanted to be in it,” she said.

”I knew I wanted to be an officer,” she added.”I didn’t know how to get there.”

After an early career working in pizza shops and later a jewelry store, McCormick found out ”how to get there” and discovered her true calling by becoming an officer in The Salvation Army.

She became the commanding officer of The Salvation Army in Fort Dodge on July 1.

”You wake up every day filled with joy,” she said. ”You’re doing a job you love.”

”You get to serve the Lord,” she added. ”What’s better than that?’

McCormick said she wants to make The Salvation Army more active and visible in Fort Dodge.

”I want people to see us and know that we are here to help them,” she said.

”Our ministry should not just be behind these walls,” she added.

Her goals include making the group more active in social services and ramping up its youth programs.

McCormick is a native of Michigan whose grandparents were Salvation Army officers in New York City.

She became a soldier in The Salvation Army in 1985.

But her working life actually began with Domino’s Pizza in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She worked for that company for close to 15 years. Later, she moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, where she worked for the Girl Scouts and in a family jewelry store.

But she always felt called to The Salvation Army.

”It’s a calling from God and you know it’s a calling,” McCormick said.

In 2009, she entered The Salvation Army School for Officer Training in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated in 2011 and was commissioned as an officer.

Her first assignment was in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. She said after living there ”the winters here are going to be nothing.”

Next she was sent to Branson, Missouri, and was there for four years.

Fort Dodge is her third assignment.