For Captain Annalise Francis, her dream of performing on Broadway is a distant memory. From a traveling youth choir to Boston University, Captain Francis was an aspiring singer, but two years ago, she turned in a different direction.

“The Lord kind of rerouted my path, and said, ‘I want you to become an officer in the Salvation Army,'” Captain Francis, 28, recalled.

As the holidays near, hundreds of needy Lower Manhattan families will be glad she walked off the stage.

Captain Francis, along with her husband, William, runs the Salvation Army’s New York Temple Corps on West 14th Street, which serves neighborhoods from Midtown to the South Ferry. During this holiday season, she helped feed 800 people a hearty Thanksgiving dinner, coordinated drives for winter clothing, and just this week she helped distribute 900 toys to 300 families.

Lower Manhattan is certainly not the poorest area of New York, but it has plenty of needy families, especially those who struggle with the higher cost of living. “There are families that are still in these pockets of low-income housing in gentrified Manhattan,” Captain Francis said, noting that some families of five have a monthly income as low as $600.

For Captain Francis, the benefit of the job comes not in the numbers of meals or toys, but in the human contact, she said. Though she’s been on the job for only 18 months, she’s learned a great deal.

“There’s a lot of people who feel hopeless and very lonely,” she said. “Just to have somebody who is there to care and to listen, and to also do something to tangibly help really moves people, and touches them even deeper than being able to hand them a toy.”

Indelible images linger in her mind. There is the young mother who treks back and forth to the hospital, worrying about her baby who suffers from a heart defect. Meanwhile, her 7-year-old daughter dreamed of a bicycle for Christmas. When the Salvation Army presented her with a bike to give to her daughter, Captain Francis said, the mother burst into tears.

Or there is the little girl who came to the Temple every day after school, because her parents, both drug and alcohol addicts, were never home. When the girl brought her parents to a recent service at the facility’s church, Salvation Army staff members convinced them to start a drug and alcohol recovery program.

Captain Francis’s work, of course, is just a small part of the effort for the Salvation Army and scores of other aid and relief organizations. In the greater New York area, the Salvation Army provides 2.7 million meals annually, in addition to sheltering thousands of homeless, a spokesman, Clifford Marshall, said. It also has a goal of distributing 100,000 toys during the holidays, he said.

For her part, Captain Francis has few regrets. After growing up near Detroit and Chicago, she went to Boston University as a vocal performance and opera major, but she soon got involved with the local Salvation Army branch. She took a job there after graduation, while she performed in operettas part time. Eventually she made the leap completely, going to the Salvation Army seminary, where she met her husband.

Captain Francis stills sings often, whether it’s in a “Christmas Extravaganza” for the Salvation Army, or caroling at the 21 Club. And she does revel in the compliments of people who tell her, “You could have been on Broadway.”

“I’m just glad to be able to offer it in different ways now,” she said of the voice that was once her future. “It’s a great honor.”