SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A woman’s plan to stop smoking involved allegedly slapping a Sacramento County deputy.

Deputy Matt Campoy says it came out of nowhere as he left his shift at the Sacramento County Jail. A woman purposely blocking his way.

“All of a sudden, she stepped into me and slapped me in the face,” he said.

That woman, 31-year-old Etta Lopez, was immediately arrested. But it turns out she had a plan: Allegedly slap a cop, kick a habit.

“She told us that she needed to quit smoking,” Campoy said.

Lopez allegedly admitted she sat in front of the county jail for hours, intent on assaulting an officer to get arrested and be put in jail, where she would be forced to stop smoking cigarettes.

“She explained it with great detail as to why,” Campoy said.

A neighbor who knows Lopez says she does smoke a lot, and they used to smoke together, but he can’t figure out her alleged smoking cessation plan.

“There’s easier ways to stop smoking than hitting a cop,” he said. “No, that’s not the way I want to quit.”

Kimberly Bankston-Lee, with the anti-smoking group Breathe California, agrees that coldcocking a cop isn’t the best way to quit cold turkey.

“If it led somebody to do something like that to quit, that lets us know in the community that we have a real problem.” she said.