David Reichert graduated in 1968 and went on to Concordia Lutheran College in Portland, Oregon on a small football scholarship. In 1971, he joined the Air Force Reserves’ 939th Military Airlift Group. He saw six months of active duty at Lackland AFB, Texas, Chanute AFB, Ill., and McChord AFB, Wash., from 1971 to 1976

David Reichert joined the King County Sheriff's Office 1972.  While a member of the Sheriff’s Department he was the commander of several prestige units such as SWAT, hostage negotiation, bomb disposal, traffic and an acting commanding officer in the  internal investigations unit. Reichert was a leading member of the Green River Task Force, which was formed to track down the "Green River Killer."  Between 1984 and 1989, he and his partner Robert Keppel extensively interviewed Ted Bundy, in order to develop a psychological profile of the Green River killer.

In 1997 he became its first elected, non-partisan, King County Sheriff in 30 years. He served two terms as Sheriff  and won the 2004 National Sheriffs' Association's Sheriff of the Year award. In 2004 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

Recognizing Reichert’s valuable experience and unique perspective as a veteran law enforcement officer, Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, appointed Reichert as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology. Reichert is only the sixth freshman in the history of the House of Representatives to be given a committee chairmanship.

The Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science and Technology has jurisdiction over all aspects of emergency preparedness, including national exercises and training for terrorist attacks, coordination between federal, state and local governments and the private sector in terrorism preparedness, and research and development of new technologies for combating terrorism. Reichert is also Vice-Chairman of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The Chairmanships empower Reichert to utilize the vast knowledge he has acquired in over thirty years in law enforcement. David Reichert is the author of Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer.

Publisher’s Weekly said of Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer, “Several years after Ted Bundy’s killing spree began in Washington, the deadliest serial killer in U.S. history embarked on a murderous rampage that would remain unsolved for two decades. Both preyed on young women but, while Bundy’s victims were often college students, the Green River Killer pursued prostitutes: runaway teenagers and women whose precarious lifestyle, Reichert says, made them easy targets for a murderer. The author, then a homicide detective in the King County Sheriff’s Office, was the lead investigator on the Green River case from the beginning, when the bodies of three women were found in and near the Green River in suburban Seattle in August 1982.

Twenty years later, DNA testing linked Gary Ridgway to his first victims, and he eventually confessed to killing 53 women. Reichert, by then the county sheriff, finally got to close a case that many thought would never be solved. His absorbing account offers an in-depth look at the obstacles and the frustrations, the leads that went nowhere and the prime suspects who were eventually cleared. In this straightforward, just-the-facts approach, Reichert downplays some of the more sensational aspects that TV has seized on, such as detectives calling on the imprisoned Bundy for help and using an FBI profiler. He illustrates how policing evolved during the course of the case, thanks to new technology, and only occasionally slips into defensiveness. Reichert vehemently stands up for his office, which was constantly second-guessed by the feds, criticized by the press and mistrusted by the victims’ families, who thought the police would have made a greater effort to find the killer if the women had been more respectable. A great book for true crime fans, Reichart’s account gives readers a chance to see the hard work that went on behind the scenes.”