Getting UTF8 from mySql Database

[rob day]

I'm retrieving some text from a mysql database. The database is UTF8, but when I trace the results in the text's endashes get dropped. Has anyone else seen this and is there a fix:

Here's the trace statement

Here's the database content. Note that <td>9:15-10:30 a.m.</td> is a hyphen the circled dash is an endash