Marathon ‘superhero’ fights cancer with fashion fundraiser

Carol Chaoui has run marathons dressed as a superhero, helped sell clothes and been filmed by a documentary film crew to raise awareness for metastatic breast cancer research. Setting up a fashion show may just have been the next, fashionable, step.

Chaoui, president of the nonprofit Carol’s Corner, said she expects to raise as much as $60,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with tonight’s Vintage Vogue Runway for Research event at The Center for the Arts Natick.

Chaoui — who herself is battling metastatic, or stage IV, breast cancer — said beyond the funds, she hopes the sold-out event sheds light on the rarely discussed advanced-stage cancer. Among the 20 models fashioning vintage clothes will be two of her own nurses and other patients fighting the disease.

“It’s to let people know that even if you have a terminal diagnosis, you can live a normal life, you can take care of your family and be active in the community,” said Chaoui of Wellesley, who after initially being diagnosed in 2009, saw her cancer return in 2015.

She hasn’t let it stop her. Known as Wellesley’s “Wonder Woman” for running in the Boston Marathon and other races dressed as the iconic superhero, she intends to run the New York Marathon for the first time this November on her 54th birthday.

Chaoui concedes that as she’s received treatments, she’s “a lot slower” than she was in her competitive running days. But she plans to fit in another run at a Cambridge 5K today — and then help run the fashion show tonight.

“This,” she said of the show, “is my first different adventure.”