Bug resetting me to beginning when joining

[Spatch]

PREGEN10k map - started and ran up through hour 8 and then logged off (after I finished the starting quests).  Then I logged back in and I was back to a fresh character with the starting quests again.

So I deleted that world, started over, just played to day 3 and WAS having a great run of RNG luck.  Logged off and when I logged back on - my character was gone, it was still day 3, and I was back to a newbie character :(.

Is there any way to recover the first character?  The settings are persistent profiles - on - so not sure why it would restart me as a new character.