Richard A. Gammick, the longtime Washoe County district attorney and public servant known for a career that stretched from the Reno Police Department to the prosecutor’s office, died May 14, 2026. He was 79.

Gammick’s public life began in 1973, when he became a Reno police officer while attending the University of Nevada, Reno, according to a tribute entered into the Congressional Record by Sen. Dean Heller. He earned a degree in business administration from UNR before going on to law school, and he graduated from the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento in 1982. His path into public service was not a single climb up a legal ladder so much as a layered civic career, one that moved from patrol work to legal advising, then into prosecution and, eventually, into the broader work of building institutions meant to serve the community.

Before he was elected district attorney, Gammick served as a deputy district attorney and chief deputy district attorney in Washoe County. Heller said he later spent 10 years as chief deputy district attorney before serving as deputy Reno city attorney, and he also worked as a legal advisor to the Reno Police Department in that role. The sequence mattered: he knew the criminal justice system from the street, from the police department, and from the prosecutor’s office, and that breadth shaped the reputation he carried for the rest of his career.

He also brought a military record to public life. Gammick served in the United States Army, including a combat tour in Vietnam, and later served in the Nevada National Guard. State and federal tributes described him as a decorated veteran who rose to captain in the U.S. Army and major in the Nevada Army National Guard. A 2021 Nevada Appeal photo caption identified him as a former Vietnam War Army veteran who later traveled to Washington, D.C., with Honor Flight Nevada in June 2019, a reminder that his service remained part of how he was publicly remembered long after his legal career had become his defining work. (Nevada Appeal)

His defining role began in 1994, when he was elected Washoe County district attorney. He served about 20 years in that office, including five terms, with the Nevada Attorney General’s office saying in 2013 that he had served 19 years and five terms and that his final term would end in 2014. The office became the center of his public identity, and it was there that his hard-edged style and his institutional instincts were most visible. Catherine Cortez Masto, then Nevada attorney general, said in 2013 that the people of Washoe County had long recognized him for his work as a dedicated prosecutor and that he had worked tirelessly for most of his adult life to protect the rights, safety and interests of others. (Nevada Attorney General press release)

The cases that became associated with him showed the pressure of the office and the scale of the crimes that came through it. In 2001, he told a Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he had personally prosecuted seven death-penalty cases, three of which resulted in death-row sentences. In January 2007, after Valerie Moore pleaded guilty in the Mizpah Hotel fire case, he said, “She will spend the rest of her life in prison.” In February 2008, after Brianna Denison’s death was publicly linked to a serial rapist, he told The Associated Press, “No doubt we are on a hunt now.” And in 2006, he helped negotiate the return of Darren Mack from Mexico after Mack killed his wife, Charla Mack, and shot Family Court Judge Chuck Weller; Gammick later said, “We got him back and no one else got hurt and that was the purpose to get him back here without anyone getting hurt, especially the people he threatened.”

That work was not only about punishment. In the Brianna Denison case, Gammick oversaw the prosecution that ended with James Biela’s conviction and death sentence, and in his retirement interview he stressed that the result came through teamwork with many law-enforcement agencies. “When I say me, none of this has just been me,” he said. “It’s a lot of teamwork with other law agencies, a lot.” He made a similar point when reflecting on the Darren Mack case, saying the safe return was the objective. The comments fit the way he described his own career in retirement, as a body of work that depended on cooperation rather than a single hand on the wheel.

He also helped shape the institutions around the cases. Heller credited him with helping open a sexual assault center for women and children in Washoe County and with implementing preventive programs intended to keep young people out of prison. In his 2014 retirement interview, Gammick said he had been a driving force behind the Mills B. Lane Justice Center, which brought multiple justice-related departments together under one roof. That was the other side of his public identity, the civic builder who worked inside a law-and-order office but also pushed for structures meant to reduce harm before it reached a courtroom.

The job carried personal risk. In 2010, while testifying in a stalking and threat case, Gammick said he began carrying a gun and wearing a bulletproof vest after repeated threats against him. “It takes a lot to make me afraid,” he said, and when asked why he had been targeted, he answered simply, “Why me?” The testimony underscored the cost of the office and the steadiness he projected while carrying it out.

Recognition came late in the career, but it was pointed. In 2013, he received the William J. Raggio Award from the Nevada Advisory Council for Prosecuting Attorneys for contributions to the administration of justice in Nevada. The attorney general’s office said the award recognized his distinguished service as Washoe County district attorney, his dedication as a prosecutor and his commitment to justice for all. Cortez Masto said, “I am honored to recognize this lifetime of effort and I am proud to award Dick Gammick with the 2013 Raggio Award.” Heller later said Gammick “exemplifies the highest standards of leadership and community service” and had made Washoe County a better place. (Congressional Record)

By the time he retired from public service on Jan. 3, 2015, he had already begun to speak about the work in a more reflective register. In a 2014 interview, he said, “It’s time for me to go, there are things I’ll miss no question, a lot of good things we’ve been able to do.” He also said he had successfully helped change Nevada law three times in cases where he believed he was right and the Nevada Supreme Court agreed, calling that “a badge” for him. The remark captured both his confidence and his sense of the office as a place where persistence could alter the law itself. (2 News)

Retirement did not mean withdrawal. Gammick said he expected to stay busy with the Boys & Girls Club, Rotary and the Child Advocacy Center, and Heller said he had been a board member of the Boys and Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, a member of the Prospector’s Club and a former president of the Reno Rotary Club. A 2018 Northern Nevada Business Weekly board announcement listed him as first vice president of the Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows board of directors, and a Rotary Club of Reno committee page listed him on the club’s Community Service Committee, associated with the Law Enforcement Service Award. Even after leaving the prosecutor’s office, he remained attached to the civic organizations that had long fit his sense of duty. (Northern Nevada Business Weekly)

Dean Heller described him in 2015 as “a devoted husband and proud father,” and named his wife as Norma. That family note sat alongside the public record of a man whose life was largely defined by service, first in uniform, then in law enforcement, then in the courtroom, and finally in the civic institutions that outlast individual officeholders. He was the kind of prosecutor who understood that the work of justice included both confrontation and prevention, both the force of the state and the patient building of systems that might make the next case less likely.

Richard Gammick will be remembered in Washoe County as a prosecutor who helped shape Nevada justice, a veteran and police officer who spent his life in service, and a civic presence who kept working for youth and community institutions after leaving office. His career carried the authority of hard cases and the quieter significance of the structures he helped build around them, and that combination is what made him more than a district attorney. It made him part of the county’s civic architecture.