problem accessing the value of a hyperlinkcolumn

[Bauer]

I have a datagrid whose rows contain checkbox and
hyperlink columns(containing employee_id field retireved
from database). Once the user checks the checkboxes i
need to get the employee ids whose checkboxes were
checked.

To retireve the employee_id i was looping throught the
datagrid items and trying to get the employeeid from the
first column as

dg1.items(i).cells(1).text

But this gives me a null value.
How can i make this work.

Thanks in advance