Malformed UTF-8 character on save

I am unable to open any of my projects due to this error (there will be additional notes after the error):

Fri May 29 11:07:17 MDT 2009:ERROR:com.eviware.soapui.support.SoapUIException: Failed to load project from file [file:file_path_and_name_here.xml]
  com.eviware.soapui.support.SoapUIException: Failed to load project from file [file:file_path_and_name_here.xml]
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProjectPro.loadProject(SourceFile:242)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProject.(WsdlProject.java:206)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProjectPro.(SourceFile:142)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProjectProFactory.createNew(SourceFile:53)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProjectProFactory.createNew(SourceFile:16)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.WorkspaceImpl.reloadProject(WorkspaceImpl.java:521)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.WorkspaceImpl.openProject(WorkspaceImpl.java:645)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.actions.project.OpenProjectAction.perform(OpenProjectAction.java:39)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.actions.project.OpenProjectAction.perform(OpenProjectAction.java:26)
  at com.eviware.soapui.support.action.swing.SwingActionDelegate.actionPerformed(SwingActionDelegate.java:101)
  at com.eviware.soapui.support.action.swing.DefaultActionList.performDefaultAction(DefaultActionList.java:107)
  at com.eviware.soapui.ui.Navigator$TreeMouseListener.mouseClicked(Navigator.java:304)
  at java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mouseClicked(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mouseClicked(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mouseClicked(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
  at javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Component.processEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Container.processEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
  at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)
  Caused by: java.io.CharConversionException: Malformed UTF-8 character: 0xf1 0x61 0x64 0x61
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.UTF8XMLDecoder.decode(UTF8XMLDecoder.java:141)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.XMLStreamReader$FastStreamDecoder.read(XMLStreamReader.java:762)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.XMLStreamReader.read(XMLStreamReader.java:162)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.PiccoloLexer.yy_refill(PiccoloLexer.java:3474)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.PiccoloLexer.yylex(PiccoloLexer.java:3958)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.Piccolo.yylex(Piccolo.java:1290)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.Piccolo.yyparse(Piccolo.java:1400)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.piccolo.xml.Piccolo.parse(Piccolo.java:714)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.store.Locale$SaxLoader.load(Locale.java:3454)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.store.Locale.parseToXmlObject(Locale.java:1276)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.store.Locale.parseToXmlObject(Locale.java:1263)
  at org.apache.xmlbeans.impl.schema.SchemaTypeLoaderBase.parse(SchemaTypeLoaderBase.java:345)
  at com.eviware.soapui.config.SoapuiProjectDocumentConfig$Factory.parse(Unknown Source)
  at com.eviware.soapui.impl.wsdl.WsdlProjectPro.loadProject(SourceFile:155)
  ... 34 more


History that may or may not be relevant:
I recently went through my projects and did some data cleanup.  I had some very large Datagen objects that I trimmed down quite considerably due to memory issues.  I cloned the newly altered Datagen step (it is a customer fabricator so it is used in most of my tests) several times to copy to other test suites and to other projects.  I saved all of my projects and have been unable to open them since.

I last edited the files with soapUI Pro 3.0 beta one nightly from 05/26/2009 and have tried the latest nightly build, and 2.5.1, all the report the same error and will not open the projects.  jEdit also notes the malformed UTF-8 character when I open the project file in that program.

I have had some crashes due to java heap space issues (which is why I was trimming down my data), however, I wasn't during the time I edited, saved, and closed each of the projects.

Thanks for  your help.