Samaria Hunter says she is blessed.

Exactly one month after her Aug. 27, 2015, surgery to remove a brain tumor the size of a plum, Hunter ran her first mile. Within two months, the North Suffolk resident was running three miles.

And on April 23, she and her five-member team will be participating in a 5K for Angels Among Us, a fundraiser for the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C. All proceeds are earmarked for brain tumor research and education, according to the center’s website.

“I am committed to raising $150,000 for Duke, whether it takes a year or 10 years,” said Hunter, who retired from the U.S. Navy six years ago and now works in information technology at Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding in Newport News.

To date, Hunter’s team, Winks from GOD!, has raised $1,540, according to the cancer center’s website. She is hoping supporters will make online, tax-deductible donations at Duke’s 5K webpage, www.angelsamongus.org. To make the donation on Hunter’s behalf, select the team, “Winks from GOD!”

“I feel so abundantly blessed that God led me to Dr. Allan Friedman (her neurosurgeon),” said Hunter, a Harbour View resident. “They saved my life … and I want to pay it forward.

“The other reason I’m sharing my story … is because brain tumors are not as uncommon as some may think,” she said. “They often go undiagnosed for years. I was fortunate, but for many others the diagnosis comes too late.”

Hunter, who had battled migraines for decades, believes her tumor went undiagnosed for as long as 15 years. As early as 2000, doctors had ordered brain and spinal scans — without contrast — because of her migraine pain.

But over the last two years, Hunter — a long distance runner who has completed three marathons — began having increasing painful bouts of muscle spasms. Medications didn’t work and one night in July, Hunter awoke to a spasm — which turned out to be a seizure — that radiated “up her left leg, across my heart, and to my head.”

That was when doctors stopped dismissing her symptoms as running injuries or a past car accident and prescribing medications or physical therapy, Hunter said.

“The doctor — who had just treated me three days prior and with certainty diagnosed me with tendonitis — returned and, in stunned amazement, told me I had a mass on the brain,” she said.

Although Naval Medical Center Portsmouth did schedule surgery to remove the tumor, Hunter and her husband, Thadd, reached out to Duke. Within days, they reviewed her records, accepted her case and booked her surgery, Hunter said.

“We were blessed to get the right person on the phone at Duke and find the best care possible,” Hunter said. “This whole situation has given me a whole new lease on life and made me realize what is really important.”