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A Sacramento woman made an alarming discovery in her home. She found a camera – hidden in what she thought was a smoke detector.

There's a spot on Carlyn Perry's apartment bedroom ceiling where the bogus smoke detector used to be.

Now she wants to know who put it there.

"On the back it says, 'This is not a smoke detector. Will not detect heat or smoke. For video surveillance only,'" Perry said about the apparatus which contained a camera that was pointed directly at her bed.

"It's a really violating feeling for sure," she said.

Last month, Perry said her apartment complex informed her that a maintenance person would be keying-in to her unit – specifically to service the fire alarms.

A few days later, she noticed the detector's cover had fallen open, although at the time, she didn't feel compelled to climb up to fix it.

Perry then went out of town with her boyfriend, and upon her return, she noticed the cover was back up.

So she asked her boyfriend if he had fixed it for her, but he said he didn't.

Confused, the two took a closer look.

That's when they discovered it wasn't a smoke detector at all, but a motion-activated surveillance system with a memory card inside.

On the memory card, someone installing the device in her room is captured on video.

There's also video of the moments Perry and her boyfriend realized their every move was being recorded.

"There's really no way for me to know how long it was there before I found it," Perry said.

Perry notified her management office at the VivLeo Apartments.

Then she filed a report with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office. The sheriff's office told KCRA 3 it cannot disclose details about the investigation.

Perry said she's never going to feel the inherent safety she thought she could count on having in her own home.

"As a woman… living alone in any city, there's such as sense of… when you're out and about, you kind of have to be constantly on alert about your safety and your surroundings," she explained. "But you have a sense of safety in your own home, and [this] just kind of violates that."

Perry said she has been staying with family since the discovery, and she has decided to move out.

She said that apartment managers are allowing her to get out of her lease.

"I didn't stay here at all after we found it because I was so creeped out about being here," Perry said.

She's also warning other renters to check their spaces to ensure their own privacy.

"People should be aware," said Perry. "I know I would have never thought to look for that kind of thing in my home."

KCRA 3 made several attempts to contact the managers for VivLeo Apartments to ask what they're doing to protect other tenants' privacy and fire safety and whether they're conducting an investigation into whether one of their employees may be responsible for installing the camera, but we did not receive a reply.

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