SharePoint PeopleEditor.ResolvedEntities always zero when control is disabled

I’ve been trying to track down this mystery in a project I’m working on for some time. In a nutshell, we’re using the Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.PeopleEditor/picker for resolving SharePoint users in our custom web parts like any good SharePoint dev might want to do.  We collect the user data and various other important stuff, and save our …