Where to start looking up if there's something wrong with cck field variables?
to test if the value of your CCK field is inside node content, I think that you can use  print_r($node); in your custom node.tpl.php (in your case node-events.tpl.php) file of your theme directory, to see the list of the CCK fields (or if you use Devel module, is best use dsm($node);)

For example, I have a CCK field called field_test_text, see this screenshot using dsm($node);



And this is the way to test the specific value of the test field:

  &lt;div class="content clear-block"&gt;
    &lt;?php print $content;
    dsm($node-&gt;field_test_text['0']['value']); //dsm way
    echo $node-&gt;field_test_text['0']['value']; //echo way
     ?&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;


I hope information be useful.