How to access vars?

I have two separate classes that need to communicate with each other. In most cases, seems like this would be very straight forward.

I have a "Pointer" class that represents a visual object on the screen. The Node class has a function that is supposed to make the Pointer object invisible.

public function displayPointer(mode:Boolean) {
var rPointer:DisplayObject = app.container.getChildByName("pointer");
trace (app.container.getChildByName("pointer")); // returns [object Pointer]
trace (rPointer.visible); // returns true
rPointer.hide = mode;
trace (rPointer.visible); // returns false
}

Yet this produced the following error:

1119: Access of possibly undefined property hide through a reference with static type flash.display:DisplayObject

I can use rPointer.visible = mode and that would work, but I need to adjust the "hide" as this variable is key to a more dynamic process involved with the visibility of the Pointer.

"Hide" is instantiated public in the class:

public var hide:Boolean;

So how can I access it?

(please help!)